Land-Use Planning Serves as a Critical Tool for Improving Resources and Environmental Carrying Capacity: A Review of Evaluation Methods and Application

Abstract

Research on resources and environmental carrying capacity (RECC) has been expanding since the early 20th century, and RECC has become a global concern and criterion for measuring regional sustainable development. Land-use planning (LUP) serves as a key tool of socioeconomic–ecological coordinated development and is deeply associated with RECC. In China, the newly established spatial planning system of 2019 identifies RECC assessment as the basis for spatial planning. However, after systematically reviewing the research history, conceptual evolution, and evaluation methods of RECC, we found that the existing approach of RECC has not addressed the impacts of stakeholders’ behavior on RECC, in other words, the governance perspective has not been sufficiently discussed. Further, research on the interaction between RECC and LUP has been far from sufficient, hampering our deep understanding of the roles of LUP in improving RECC. In order to fill this gap, a new framework is proposed to explain the formation mechanism of RECC combining the governance considerations based on the social–ecological system (SES) framework, which has made contributions to enrich the research perspective of RECC and its theoretical and methods system. In addition, the interaction path between RECC and LUP is constructed according to the new RECC framework and a policy toolbox for improving RECC, which will provide a comprehensive and systematic practical application path for improving RECC and promoting regional socioeconomic–ecological coordinated sustainable development. The conclusion part discusses the future research topics and limitations for RECC and LUP.