Economic structure and environmental quality and their impact on changing land use efficiency in China

Extensive urban land expansion and heavy industrialization have increased energy consumption and caused environmental problems, both of which present serious threats to humans. Consequently, improved land use efficiency and realization of green development are imperative. Based on a detailed analysis of spatial-temporal evolution of urban land use efficiency, this paper analyzes the synergistic effect of industrial structure and city size, as well as the effect of environmental quality, by using panel data from 283 cities at or above prefecture-level in China from 2003 to 2012. It was concluded that 1) environmental quality has an obvious “crowding out effect” on urban land use efficiency and 2) urban land use efficiency shows a significant spatial auto-correlation. The effect of industrial structure is dependent on population size of the city. It has been found that a threshold population size of more than 108.45 (10,000 persons) is needed for an optimized benefit from industrial linkages. The urban population size presents an inverted-U shape against the urban land use efficiency, and the marginal benefit of urban size increases when the industrial structure shifts from secondary industry to tertiary industry. Additionally we found that the actual urban size of 98.2% is less than the cities’ optimal sizes.