The Impacts of Regional Cooperation on Urban Land-Use Efficiency: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta, China

Abstract

Urban land-use efficiency (ULUE) has been increasingly recognized as an issue of land-use management across the world in the last century as the globe experienced unprecedented rapid urban expansion. However, although a large body of studies was dedicated to analyzing the driving forces of ULUE, literature was rarely focused on the impacts of regional cooperation on ULUE. To bridge the knowledge gap, we used the Chinese trailblazer of regional cooperation–Yangtze River delta (YRD)—as a case to reveal the impacts of regional cooperation on ULUE. Social network analysis and a super efficiency SBM model with undesirable outputs were used to measure regional cooperation and ULUE, respectively. Furthermore, the impacts of regional cooperation on ULUE were examined by using the geographically and temporally weighted regression model. The results show that regional cooperation in the YRD strengthened from 2009 to 2016, among which Shanghai was the core node city in the YRD. Only seven cities maintained good ULUE with a stable trend during 2009–2016. The regression results indicated the positive impacts of regional cooperation on ULUE, which was more evident in the southern cities of the YRD. The potential mechanism to explain the impacts of regional cooperation on ULUE includes co-building transportation facilities and joint development zones. These findings provide insightful implications for improving ULUE by strengthening regional cooperation in Chinese cities.

The Population Flow under Regional Cooperation of “City-Helps-City”: The Case of Mountain-Sea Project in Zhejiang

“…Economic cooperation has brought significant benefits to poverty counties [7][8][9]36]. Based on our descriptive and regression analysis, co-construction of industrial facilities, such as enclave industrial parks, is still the important form of Mountain-Sea cooperation.…”

“…As for the spatial dimension of inequalities, regional cooperation has been largely promoted. Regional cooperation refers to the type of development that occurs when two or more jurisdictions cross boundaries to form collaborations for short-term or long-term benefits in economic, ecological, or social fields [35,36]. Generally, existing studies have divided regional cooperation into three types: economic, social, and institutional [10,36,37].…”

“…Regional cooperation refers to the type of development that occurs when two or more jurisdictions cross boundaries to form collaborations for short-term or long-term benefits in economic, ecological, or social fields [35,36]. Generally, existing studies have divided regional cooperation into three types: economic, social, and institutional [10,36,37]. For example, Pan et al explored the impacts of these three dimensions on urban land-use efficiency and indicated the potential mechanism behind them [36].…”

“…Generally, existing studies have divided regional cooperation into three types: economic, social, and institutional [10,36,37]. For example, Pan et al explored the impacts of these three dimensions on urban land-use efficiency and indicated the potential mechanism behind them [36]. Interjurisdictional cooperation is an effective way to promote coordinated economic development, joint construction, and sharing of public services and facilities, and finally realize balanced regional development.…”

“…It involves fields of manufacturing, agriculture, and forestry, etc. The shortage of land quotas incentivizes the developed localities to collaborate with less-developed places that can adequately supply physical space for development [36]. For example, developed and underdeveloped municipalities may jointly build industrial parks in underdeveloped regions, which can facilitate the economic development of disadvantaged places and accelerate the exchanges of production factors [8,9].…”