Urban land market and land-use changes in post-reform China: A case study of Beijing

• Land use changed dramatically in post-reform Beijing from 1992 to 2008.
• Cultivated land more than halved while two types of urban built land doubled.
• Land price, cultivated land availability and location are significant dynamic factors.
• Land reforms affected the spatial–temporal dynamics of land use changes.
• Conformity of land price mechanism with reform goals depends on land use types.

China launched an ambitious urban land-use reform to improve land-use efficiency, raise funds for infrastructure construction, and facilitate foreign investment in the late 1980s. Few studies have systematically evaluated the effects of the market mechanisms on land-use changes in Chinese cities. This paper takes the city of Beijing as a case study to quantify the magnitude of land-use changes and model it in relation to spatial and market drivers through time and across the metropolitan region. The analysis uses unique district-level land survey data from 1992, 1996, 2001, 2004 and 2008, as well as land granting records. Analysis reveals that, since the urban land market was established in 1992, the spatial pattern of land uses has changed dramatically in Beijing, land price has exerted a significantly influence on land-use conversion, and the municipal recognition of an open market for land assets has set the spatial–temporal pattern of land uses on a course that sharply differs from past trends in Beijing.