Elsevier

Land Use Policy

Volume 111, December 2021, 104962
Land Use Policy

Change in land use structure in urban China: Does the development of high-speed rail make a difference

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104962Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The spatial impact of high-speed rail on urban land use structure is evaluated using a spatial panel regression model.

  • A detailed data with over 1.5 million record of land transaction records for the period 2007 – 2015 were used.

  • The impacts were found to differ among various types of cities.

  • Important implications for land use policies were provided.

Abstract

China has launched an ambitious strategy to develop a national high-speed rail (HSR) system with a total distance of 38,000 km by 2025. The massive development of HSR has not only facilitated the improvement of interregional accessibility, it also substantially stimulated urbanization and urban expansions across various cities. This paper investigates fundamental questions pertaining to change in land use related to HSR in China. First, does the development of HSR play a role in promoting change in urban land use structure? Second, does land use structure change have a spatial dimension related to HSR development? For the first time, the spatial dimension of urban land use as it is related to HSR development is evaluated empirically using a spatial panel regression analysis. The assessment is based on a micro-level land use data covering 285 cities for the period 2007−2015. The research findings reveal that HSR plays a significant role in promoting urban land use structure change in China. The influence of HSR is much larger than that from other types of transportation infrastructure. In addition, impacts were found to vary across different size scales of cities. In particular, the impact of HSR on change in urban land use structure was found significant in Tier 2–3 cities. Conversely, the financial constraint of local government was also confirmed to have a significant influence on land use structure change in medium and small cities (Tier 3–5 cities). Overall, the study provides evidence and implications for policy makers to improve decision-makings on land use policy reforms and guidance for future infrastructure development.

Introduction

China has launched an ambitious strategy to develop a national high-speed rail (HSR) system with a total distance of 38,000 km by 2025. The rapid development of HSR was primarily due to the strong support from the central government in terms of infrastructure planning, financing and project delivery (Chen and Haynes, 2015). For instance, in addition to providing direct financial support through government funding, numerous HSR projects were financed by bank loans from state banking systems and expanded public debt endorsed by the central government. In addition, the rapid implementation of HSR construction was also benefited from the involvement of provincial and local governments,1 which provided support, such as land acquisition and coordination with local residents who received compensation for relocating to facilitate HSR project completion (Chen and Haynes, 2015).

The massive development of HSR has not only substantially improved interregional accessibility but rapid urbanization and urban expansions are also observed in many Chinese cities served by HSR. One salient phenomenon is the emergence of “HSR New Town”, which is essentially a newly developed area located near HSR stations. Given that the location of many new HSR stations is usually in suburban or rural areas that are far from city centers, these HSR new towns are either located on the periphery of existing urban centers or in the newly created urban cores.

In fact, the development of new towns has become ubiquitous in numerous Chinese cities, which may have a significant influence on urban land structure. For instance, during the initial development of the Beijing-Shanghai HSR, the municipal government of the City of Bengbu, Anhui province, redesigned its land use plan after the location of the new Bengbu HSR station was finalized.2 Since the location of the new HSR station is in a rural area about 10 km away from the existing city center, a new urban land use policy was implemented to promote land use for the development in this area. The plan included building civic infrastructure and facilities, such as universities, government office buildings and industrial parks, and a new commercial center.

Such a diverse and all encapsulating land use plan is also known as a comprehensive land development plan, and essentially reflects the land use policy developed by the central government (see Table 1). While the development of HSR new town in some cities, such as Bengbu, was successful, given the prosperous increase of economic activities through relocation, a similar development in other cities was not successful. Some of the reasons, as revealed by Chen and Haynes (2015), are due to the lack of land use supporting infrastructures, such as transit, schools, hospitals and recreation centers. These unsuccessful HSR new towns have been named “ghost town” by media reports due to low utilization.3 As a result, it remains unclear whether the implemented land use policies are effective in responding to the process of HSR construction. Have they promoted the structural change of urban land use in developing a balanced urban development in China? Further, how does the effectiveness of the land use policy, related to HSR development, vary across different types of cities in China?

The study is also motivated by the concept of shared space in smart places, which focuses on a spatial planning oriented approach to land use as opposed to a regional economic approach. For many years, smart growth, such as promoting diverse housing types, mixed land uses, supporting pedestrian access and public transit, has been reiteratively emphasized by urban planners as the key to achieving efficient utilization of the spatial environment (Talen and Knaap, 2003). The development of HSR has unprecedentedly facilitated the convenience of shared spaces given the improved spatial connections among various cities. Passengers are able to travel more efficiently between major metropolitan cities for business, personal and leisure purposes by HSR, which also has a fundamental implication for the urban land structure given that resources, such as labor, capital and land can be shared at a much wider geographic scale. Hence, a valid understanding of the impact of the development of HSR on land use structure change would provide important evidence for planners and policy makers to reassess the effectiveness of the current land use policy, and hence identify a sound strategy to facilitate smart land development in the future.

The third motivation of this research originates from the concern for the rising debt risk among different local governments. The large scale of transportation infrastructure development and urban expansion has unavoidably increased local government debt due to the escalation of public expenditure. As a result, local governments are more inclined to promote land use change by transferring public land use rights (development opportunities) to private land developers through bidding, auction, or listing processes. Although these efforts may temporarily increase government revenue through the collection of land releasing fee, the approach is essentially unsustainable since the revenue may not be sufficient to offset the cost for the development of new physical infrastructures, such as HSR, or related overhead/civic infrastructures, such as transit, schools, hospitals and etc. In fact, the most recent land use policy released by the central government clearly indicates that local government debt risks need to be mitigated in response to HSR development. Unfortunately, it is still unclear how local government financial status may affect the outcomes of urban land use structure change and which cities may need special attention.

The objective of this paper is to provide, for the first time, an empirical assessment of the land use policies related to HSR development in China. Specifically, the effectiveness of land use policy is evaluated by examining whether the development of HSR has played a significant role in promoting urban land use structure change, and if yes, how these effects vary across different types of cities. In addition, the influence of local governments’ fiscal condition on urban land structure change is also evaluated empirically with considerations given to different types of cities. We believe that the clarification of these questions is fundamental as it provides policymakers with evidence and guidance in improving decision-makings on land use policy reforms and future infrastructure development.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the relevant literature. Section 3 introduces the land use structure data, and methodology is introduced in section 4. Section 5 discusses the empirical results and section 6 summarizes and concludes.

Section snippets

Literature review

This section discusses the literature on land use structure in terms of the concept, the diversification, and the measurement. In addition, the section also identifies the research gaps through a review of the studies relevant to land use change in China. More importantly, an analytical framework is developed for the empirical assessment of the land use policies implemented in the process of HSR development.

Land use structure is generally considered as a proportional relationship between all

Land use structure data

In contrast to traditional land use studies based on remote sensing data, the investigation here measures urban land use structure change using land transaction data obtained from the website of the Land Market of China (www.landchina.com). The website provides detailed information on each transaction of newly released land by local government, such as address, the purpose of land use, area size, the land source, leasing pattern and land use type.4

Methodology

Previous studies have generally confirmed that the socioeconomic impacts of HSR tend to vary spatially (Chen et al., 2019). This is partially due to the existence of strong spatial spillover effects in the process of transportation (HSR) system development (Chen and Haynes, 2015) To examine whether spatial dependence exists in our assessment, the spatial autocorrelation test was conducted using the software Geoda, a software initially developed by Anselin et al. (2006). The universal global

Results

The analysis was conducted using both the entropy information index and the balance index as the dependent variables, respectively. In addition, the analysis based on various city groups were conducted and compared. In general, the regression results suggest that spatial dependence is adequately controlled for as both the spatial lag parameters of the land use structure index (rho) and some of the spatial weight explanatory variables are found to be statistically significant across different

Discussion and conclusion

This paper examines the role of HSR development on urban land structure change. For the first time, the question is investigated using a spatial econometric model based on a panel data that covers 285 prefecture cities for the period 2007–2015. The empirical evidence helps us to understand the patterns of urban land use change in China. The results confirm that HSR development does play a significant role in facilitating the change in the structure of urban land use in China. Furthermore, the

Author agreement

All the authors approved the final version of the manuscript to be submitted to Land Use Policy.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy for providing financial support for this research through the China Program International Fellowship. Yulong Zhou would also like to acknowledge the financial support received from the following resources: the National Nature Science Fund of China (71803092), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M641619).

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