The Impact Of Land Finance On Sustainable Utilization Of Urban Land

With the rapid development of urbanization,China's urban land resources have been vigorously developed,making great contributions to social and economic development.However,the extensive utilization mode leads to the extent of urban land expansion far exceeds the extent of urban population growth,thus urban sprawl is widespread.Many studies show that urban sprawl poses a serious threat to the sustainable use of urban land in China.In the face of increasingly severe internal and external development environment,it is good for China to promote the control of urban sprawl and the sustainable utilization of urban land,which is not only an important way to solve the current development dilemma,but also an important driving force for long-term coordinated economic development.Western scholars often explore the causes of urban sprawl from the economic perspective.It is believed that market forces play a decisive role in the formation of urban sprawl.This is because western governments rarely intervene in urban economic development to a very strong degree,and factors from the market level determine the expansion efficiency of urban space.The process of urban development led by market forces in western countries is obviously inconsistent with the reality of urban development led by government under China's socialist market economy system.For China,the government has always been in the leading position in the social and economic development,and has a very strong ability to correct and adjust the market.Therefore,to control urban sprawl in China,it must be based on China's development practice.In addition to the analysis of economic factors,institutional factors must also be analyzed.Considering the lack of comprehensive and systematic investigation of institutional and economic factors in relevant researches,it is urgent to establish a research framework of urban sprawl governance that is in line with China's national conditions and guide the sustainable use of urban land in China.When studying the institutional factors of urban sprawl,land finance must be considered.Since land finance and urban sprawl are both influenced by China's special institutional factors,and are closely related to the use of urban land resources,the relationship between them must be detected.Therefore,the impact of land finance on urban sprawl is studied,and a research framework including institutional factors and economic factors is established to clarify the action mechanism of these influencing factors at different levels.On this basis,using related social-economic data and remote sensing image data,taking 80 prefecture-level cities of six provinces in central China as research objects,the scale of land finance and the urban sprawl of each city from 2012 to2017 are measured.Then,the impact of land finance on urban sprawl is analyzed based on the panel data analysis method,mediating effect analysis method and moderating effect analysis method,so as to explore how the institutional and economic forces affect the interaction between land finance and urban sprawl,and to provide a theoretical framework and policy basis for sustainable urban land use.The main research work and conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)Through reviewing and sorting out the existing research results,the mechanism of land finance influencing urban sprawl is clarified.The land finance intensifies the urban space expansion to a large extent,and the market power fails to bring higher utilization efficiency to the new land in cities,thus causing the serious urban sprawl problem;(2)Objectively and scientifically measures the scale of land finance and urban sprawl of 80 cities in central China,and grasps the change characteristics of land finance and urban sprawl of each city.This study innovatively constructs the measurement index of urban sprawl from two kinds of remote sensing images,NPP-VIIRS and Landscan.It is found that there are great differences between the scale of land finance and the degree of urban sprawl.The scale of land finance in provincial capital cities is far larger than that of ordinary prefecture-level cities,but the extent of land sprawl in provincial capital cities is lower than that of ordinary prefecture-level cities;(3)Based on the Granger causality test,it shows that land finance is the one-way Granger cause of urban sprawl.Based on panel regression analysis,it also shows that the expansion of land finance can significantly aggravate urban sprawl,and it is more serious for ordinary prefecture-level cities than for provincial capitals;(4)The empirical study on institutional factors finds that the expansion of local finance gap or the intensification of official promotion competition can significantly enhance the scale of urban land finance,and thus lead to urban sprawl expansion;(5)The empirical study on economic factors shows that when the proportion of secondary industry output is higher or the level of housing price is higher,the impact of land finance on urban sprawl is more serious.However,the higher the labor wage,the lower the influence of land finance on urban sprawl,which is different from the situation in western countries;(6)Based on the research results,some policy suggestions are put forward in order to promote the sustainable development of cities,especially the efficient development of urban land.For example,(i)Optimize the financial relationship between the central and local governments,and realize the balance between the administrative and financial powers of local governments;(ii)Impose rigid constraint to urban land finance scale to promote sustainable development;(iii)Change the mode of economic development and the evaluation standard of government performance to promote the sustainable development of the city;(iv)Reform the urban planning system to enhance the binding force of urban planning policies.The main innovations of this study are as follows:(1)Existing research on urban sprawl attribute urban sprawl to economic factors and largely ignore the role of government in urban land expansion.This paper establishes a research framework based on the impact of land finance on urban sprawl at both government and market levels;(2)Based on NPP-VIIRS night light image and Land Scan population density dynamic statistical image,this paper designed a new urban sprawl measurement index,and measured the land finance scale and urban sprawl degree of 80 cities in the central region from 2012 to 2017,which provided an evaluation scheme and application example for the scientific measurement of urban sprawl;(3)Mediating effect analysis method and moderating effect analysis method were used to examine how institutional and economic factors affect the relationship between land finance and urban sprawl.