Exploring The Condition Of Urban Land Use Planning And Control Of Small And Medium-Sized Cities In Market-Oriented Economy

With the reform and the opening-up policies going on in China, the national economy characterized by industrialization has got a relatively stable and lasting development over the past 20 years. China joined WTO in 2001 and is now trying to incorporate in the world economy system. This accelerates the process of transforming the traditional agriculture economy into the modern industrial economy. As the indispensable carriers of industrialization, Chinese cities have been in a fast-developing period. Large amounts of farmland will be changed into urban land, and effective land use planning and control are urgently needed in the course of urbanization. Furthermore, although the land use policies and the urban development pattern have changed greatly during the transformation from the planned economy to the market-oriented economy, current land use planning and control still depend on the urban planning system suitable for the planned economy. Many problems have occurred in this situation. Making up of over one half of the population of the urban China, Chinese small cities play an important role in the process of urbanization. In addition to some of the same problems with the large cities, Chinese small cities have many characteristics in urban land use, including lacking urban infrastructures, being short of investment leading by local governments, and being devoid of land management staff. These characteristics are very obvious in such fast developing small cities as Xian-Ju City. This study tries to find out the current characteristics and major problems in the urban land use of small cities in China by the case study of Xian-Ju City, and set forth some suggestions to improve urban land use planning and control suitable for the current market-oriented economy.