Urban land expansion under economic transition in China: A multi-level modeling analysis

• This study examines the effects of economic transition on urban land expansion based on different types of urban land use.
• We have found that significant spatial variation at both provincial and prefectural levels exist in urban land expansion.
• The triple process is a significant driving force of urban land expansion, but different process has different mechanism.
• Decentralization can impact urban land expansion at both prefectural level and provincial level.

China is undergoing an unprecedented urbanization process in which massive amounts of rural land has been converted to urban use. Indeed, rapid urban land expansion in China has generated heightened concerns over consequences of urbanization and challenges to sustainability and public policy. This study applies the triple transition framework of globalization, marketization, and decentralization to study how economic transition influences urban land expansion in China. Using official land use conveyance data from 2005 to 2008, we have found that significant spatial variation at both provincial and prefectural levels exist in urban land expansion. Regression analysis at the prefectural level reveals that the theoretical framework explains urban land expansion. While marketization is more important to overall urban land expansion, globalization plays a critical role in industrial land expansion. Further applying a multi-level modeling analysis, we find that two-level modeling can considerately improve the model and, more importantly, decentralization significantly contributes to the expansion of construction and industrial land. These results indicate that China's process of urban land expansion is influenced by global forces (globalization), the transition from a socialist to a market economy (marketization), and the process of decentralization dismantling totalitarianism of socialism and mobilizing local resources for development. We argue for integrating global and local forces to more fully understand urbanization process and sustainability challenges.