Evaluating the Relationship between Urban Population Growth and Land Expansion from a Policymaking Perspective: Ningbo, China

Abstract

Land expansion and population growth are the most important factors for urban development in the rapid urbanization stage. Intensive land use is a key goal of urban sustainable development. Therefore, to promote intensive land use, local governments should take the scientific evaluation of the relationship between urban land and population as the basis and make policies cautiously. Thus, it is vital to adopt evaluation methods that are sensitive to intensive land use. However, this topic has received insufficient attention in the literature. Addressing this gap, this study (1) proposes a modified method to evaluate the relationship between land expansion and population growth, (2) compares the results of three evaluation methods, and (3) compares the relationship between evaluation results and urban construction land area per capita (UCAP) using UCAP as an indicator of intensive land use. Our findings indicate that existing evaluation methods do not adequately reflect the state and trend of intensive land use and that our modified model significantly improves the sensitivity to intensive land use. Additionally, this paper provides policy suggestions based on a quantitative evaluation of the relationship between urban land expansion and urban population growth. These conclusions provide a basis for formulating planning strategies to promote the intensive use of land in cities in the stage of rapid development.