Spatial-temporal characteristics and determinants of land urbanization quality in China: Evidence from 285 prefecture-level cities

This study contributes to research on the land-growth-environment nexus by putting emphasis on assessing the quality of land urbanization using our evaluation index system from four aspects: suitability of land urbanization, social, economic and ecological benefits of urban land use. By employing Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA), this paper concerns the spatial-temporal characteristics of land urbanization quality(LUQ) in the 285 prefecture-level cities over the past decade. In analyzing the determinants of LUQ, this paper starts from addressing the driving forces of LUQ in six urban agglomerations from the perspective of economic development, land market and local governments' behavior. The results indicate that land urbanization in China has relatively positive spatial autocorrelation with significant agglomeration effect. The path of LUQ in 285 prefecture-level cities fits in the waves of urban development and land use policy in the country. Moreover, the levels of urban land marketization and economic growth are the most common determinants while local governments behavior mostly influence the western region of China. These findings may suggest that development of urban agglomeration needs to be further promoted and more emphasis of New-type urbanization should be given to improve the urban layout and morphology.