Decoupling Of Economic Growth And Urban Land Expansion

As an important carrier of human production and life,urban land is the basic production factor on which we must rely of economic growth,and therewith economic growth has become the fundamental reasons of urban land expansion.Since reform and opening up,along with sustained and rapid economic growth,China's urban land has been expanded rapidly."China City Statistical Yearbook" shows that during 1981 and 2012,China's urban built-up area increased from 7438 km2 to 45565.8 km2,more than doubled within 30 years.The urban land expansion supports economic growth,meanwhile this brings in a series of severe negative externalities,such as the rapid loss of farmland,the aggravation of social conflict and the pressure increase of ecological environments.Considering that China is a country of large population with little land,and the space for China's urban land further expansion is very limited,therefore to decouple economic growth and urban land is an inevitable requirement.The description of the statistical results shows that along with the evolution of China's economic growth stage,especially after entering the midterm of industrialization,a slight turn of the relationship between economic growth and urban land expansion.This mainly displays in,with the continuous growth of economy:(1)although the scale of urban land expansion generally is still rising,since the late 90's apparent "W" shape fluctuation has begun to show,and there have been signs of stability;(2)the speed of urban land expansion began to gradually decrease in the "W"shape fluctuation from the late 90's.As you see,since the late 90's,the momentum of China's urban land expansion began to slow down gradually with economic growth,and the deviating relationship between the two has already begun.The emergence of the turn is of practical significance for transformation of China's economic growth mode,construction of a resource-conserving and environment-friendly society.So it has become a problem demanding prompt solution to scientifically measure the decoupling relationship between economic growth and urban land expansion,to prove the influence factors,and to formulate a customized control strategy of urban land expansion accordingly,so that harmonious development of the two above can be guided.On this issue,this paper makes study on the following aspects:Firstly,on the basis of summarizing the existing literature,the paper teases out the theoretical framework of the decoupling analysis in the resource environment field.The result shows that:(1)the ambiguity of decoupling definition leads to the disunity of decoupling criteria,and the current decoupling criteria can be classified into "Speed Criterion" and "Quantity Criterion".The former means that the speed of the resource environment consumption is slower than that of the economic growth,and the latter means that the consumption quantity(or level)of the resource environment stabilizes or falls with the economic growth.Corresponding to the criteria,the decoupling measure methods are also separated into two kinds-one based on "Speed Criterion" and the other based on"Quantity Criterion".(2)the general mechanism of decoupling in the resource environment field can be summarizes as two control aspects-the optimization of the economic growth method and the use of the resource environment.The former mainly refers to that the economic growth method turns from mainly relying on the input quantity of the resource environment to relying on the using efficiency,and it can be broken up into technology effect and structure effect.The latter mainly refers to that the resource environment consumption is substituted for other environmental factors,and the factors for the alternatives are classified into fund&labor and the resource environment drifting out of control.Moreover,there are a variety of combinations of the two mechanism,and their effects are different.(3)The decoupling in the resource environment field is not a natural law,but a natural phenomenon with poor universality and strong uncertainty.For this reason,the phenomenon should be measured first during the analysis,and then the underlying influence factors should be explored,so that the phenomenon can be handled better in the practice to promote the rapid and sustained growth of economy.Secondly,the paper proposes the control meaning of decoupling measure in virtue of"Environment Mountain",and reexamines the two kinds of decoupling criteria.The result shows that,(1)in the resource environment field,the decoupling measure not only answers"decouple or not",but also tells us whether "double wins" has arrived,and whether should turn the "moderate control" of resource environment use to "stringent control";(2)"Speed Decoupling" may misjudge the coming of "double wins" in advance,and "Quantity Decoupling" can exhibit the turning point from "dilemma" to "double wins" of economic growth and resource environment exhaustion more exactly.Hence,using the definition of"Quantity Decoupling" and the decoupling measure method based on it ought to be a more reasonable choice.The empirical test also verifies this point.On this base,the paper measures the decoupling relationship between economic growth and urban land expansion from 1999 to 2012 on the nation level and of the three big regions,ie.east?midland?west,choosing Kuznets Curve Model as a tool,which is a decoupling measure method based on "Quantitative Standard".The results shows:(1)on the nation level,only the trend exists that economic growth and urban land expansion decouple,but the substantial decoupling has not yet happened.If the urban economy continues to grow at its present rate,the critical point of decoupling will be reached about in 2017;(2)in the east,the substantial decoupling between economic growth and urban land expansion has undergone,and as early as 2010 the critical point of decoupling has been gone over.;(3)in the midland,only the trend exists that economic growth and urban land expansion decouple,but the substantial decoupling has not yet happened.If the urban economy continues to grow at its present rate,the critical point of decoupling will be reached about in 2024,which is about 14 years later than the east;(4)in the west,neither economic growth and urban land expansion decouple,nor the decoupling trend exists.Monotonically increasing relation still appears between the two.Hence in the west,urban land will remain expand rapidly in the short term along with economic growth.Then,from two aspects,ie.economic growth and urban land expansion,the paper systematically analyzes the decoupling conditions of the two,with the decoupling general mechanism in the resource and environment field as guidance,and thus establishes the influence factors index system,and analyzes the decoupling influence factors of the two using the data of the nation and the east?the midland from 1999-2012.The results show:(1)on the nation level,the enhancement of administrative control,the improvement of high-tech industries proportion and the accumulation of human capital contribute much to decoupling;local governments's chase for and dependence on land finance is the main obstacle to decoupling,so its decoupling mainly benefit from the optimization of economic growth pattern and the control of urban land expansion,but the former plays a leading role;(2)in the east,the accumulation of human capital is the major contributory to decoupling;failure and inflation of the land market is the main obstacle to decoupling,and local governments's chase for and dependence on land finance is the second obstacle.Because the intensity of administrative control has no significant effect on decoupling,its decoupling mainly benefit from the optimization of economic growth pattern,and the concrete manifestations are the technical effect and the structural effect.In the future the control of urban land expansion should be strengthened,and should treat the improvement of the third industries' proportion as a major dig,and meanwhile regard the pure technical progress as a long-term strategic principle of decoupling;(3)in the midland,the enhancement of administrative control of urban land expansion makes a major contribution to decoupling,;local governments's chase for and dependence on land finance is the major obstacle,and failure and inflation of the land market is the minor obstacle.Because the intensity of administration control accounted for absolute advantage in the positive contribution,its decoupling is mainly due to the urban land expansion control,and the manifestation is that fund?labor force and other non-land factors replace the input of urban land,but its sustainability is poor,.In the future the improvement of the hi-tech industries'proportion should be treated as a major dig,and meanwhile should strengthen the labor education and training,and should attach importance on the introduction and the return of high-level talents,further strengthen the substitution of the labor quality improvement for the labor quantity increase.;(4)Because in the west,neither economic growth and urban land expansion decouple,nor the decoupling trend exists,it can be inferred intuitively that its decoupling mechanism has not appeared,or the mechanism has appeared but the backward development of social economy is still inadequate to support its role.Finally,according to the analysis results of decoupling measure and influence factors,the paper constructs the urban land expansion differentiation control system:(I)in the east,we should take the " limitation is major" as the control strategy,and the specific measures mainly include strict control of incremental land used,mining the existing stock of land,strengthening land supervision work meanwhile;optimization of the industrial structure,and focusing on improving the third industry's proportion;improving the technological transformation and absorption capacity,and reducing the structural dislocation between technology R&D and economic demand;pilot and implementation property tax.With the control,the expected effect is to "improve the curvature of urban land expansion curve in the range of double wins",namely to accelerate the reduction speed that urban land expand with economic grow;(2)in the midland,we should take the "provide and limit" as the control strategy,and the specific measures mainly include modest increase in incremental land,enhancement of the supervision to the use of incremental land meanwhile;optimization of the industrial structure,and focusing on improving the hi-tech industries'proportion;strengthening the on-the-training,paying attention to the introduction and the return of high-level talents;reinforcing the normalization of auction and listing and the use of land transferring income.With the control,the effect is expected to "reduce the peak and curvature of urban land expansion curve,shift the decoupling inflexion point to the origin point",namely to usher in the decoupling between economic growth and urban land expansion as soon as possible,and to reduce the use cost of urban land at the same time.(3)in the west,we should take the "provision is major" as the control strategy as well,the specific measures mainly include moderately adding of the newly increase quota to the west;actively undertaking the industrial transfer from the east and the midland;increasing financial transfer payments,making up for the fiscal gap,and alleviating land selling impulsion,etc.