Analysis of the Urban Land Use Efficiency in the New-Type Urbanization Process of China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt

Abstract

The accelerated urbanization process in China has caused a shift in the urban land use structure. The Chinese government has issued ‘the National New-type Urbanization Plan’ focusing on the rational use of resources, which is of great significance for the intensification and sustainability of land use. In promoting the construction of the new-type urbanization (N-TU), enhancing the urban land use efficiency (ULUE) is crucial to regional coordinated development. This study uses panel data from 2011 to 2020 for 11 provinces (cities) in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) and adopts the super efficiency (SE) slacks-based measure (SBM) model with undesirable outputs and the entropy weight method to calculate the ULUE and N-TU levels. The study uses the System generalized method of moment (Sys-GMM) to study the N-TU’s impact on the ULUE empirically. The results indicate: (i) the overall trend of new-type urbanization level is gradually increasing and has the characteristics of uneven spatial distribution between provinces. (ii) The ULUE shows a fluctuating upward trend during the studied period. (iii) The N-TU and its subsystems have significant positive effects on the ULUE. Overall, this study aims to explore the relationship between the N-TU and ULUE enriching the theoretical analysis and empirical research in related fields, thus helping decision makers in the assessment and design of policy recommendations.