Spatiotemporal Variation of Driving Forces for Settlement Expansion in Different Types of Counties

Abstract

Understanding the process of settlement expansion and the spatiotemporal variation of driving forces is the foundation of rational and specific planning for sustainable development. However, little attention has been paid to the spatiotemporal differences of driving forces among different counties, especially when they are representatives of different development types. This study used Guanyun, Kunshan and Changshu as case studies, and binary logistic regression was employed. The results showed that the expansion rates of Kunshan and Changshu were 5.55 and 3.93 times higher than that of Guanyun. The combinations and relative importance of drivers varied with counties and periods. The change in the number of driving forces can be divided into three stages: increasing stage, decreasing stage, and stable stage. In the relatively developed counties, Kunshan and Changshu, the importance of population is decreased, while it remain an important factor in the less developed county, Guanyun. In addition, the effect of GDP stays the same in Kunshan while it becomes the most important factor in Changshu. The distance to the main road and the distance to town are increasingly important in Kunshan and Guanyun, and distance to town has been the only common factor in the last period, indicating the discrepancy is increased. The relative importance of distance to a lake in Kunshan and Changshu increased, reflecting the role of increasing tourism in accelerating settlement expansion.

Effectiveness Regulation of Construction Land: Does Plan Matter?

“…In fact, the expansion of rural settlements had not been effectively controlled. Because of population growth and income, rural residents were all willing to improve their living condition [28]. In this case, the demand of rural settlements was far more than plan intention.…”

“…In addition, the spatial distributions of rural settlements are fragment. At this situation, there is a strong need to reserve adequate plan quota and draw a specific zone for rural settlements that is conducive to centralize the rural region [28,29].…”

“…Similar to construction land expansion, planning implementation is a spatiotemporal dynamic process, during which both the spatial expansion and the drivers change with time and space [28]. For these reasons, evaluation of land use plan cannot be understood adequately without connecting different types of construction land expansion.…”

“…An increasing number of planners, policymakers and academic researchers have focused on outcomes of land use plan implementation in construction land in China. Considerable efforts have been undertaken to understand the process of construction land expansion [1,3,6,17,[23][24][25][26][27] and its drivers [17,[28][29][30][31]. Furthermore, frameworks for evaluating Land Use Plan [15,[32][33][34] and the effectiveness of the control of construction land have been analyzed and discussed [13,15,16,35,36].…”

Spatial Patterns and Driving Forces of Greenhouse Land Change in Shouguang City, China

“…In addition, climatic factors, such as precipitation, influence the growth of vegetables and are thus important in decisions about greenhouse construction [9,[43][44][45][46], while distance factors, such as the distance to the nearest road or railway, will influence transportation convenience and thus the final cost of vegetables wholesale [47][48][49]. Additional distance factors, such as the distance to the nearest settlement or river, can also influence the management of vegetables planted in greenhouse facilities [50][51][52][53].…”