Research on China’s Urban Development Strategy Based on Arable Land Preservation

Abstract

This paper studies the trend of urbanization in China, examines the evolution of the urban scale structure in China through the development of a quadratic regression model for the urban rank-size rule and significantly improves the fitness of large-sized cities to the model, formulates a power function to simulate the relationship between urban size and urban population density, and studies the evolution trend of the function in China. This paper also includes the design of a scenario of compact urban growth according to the evolution trend of urban scale structure and urban size–population density function based on farmland preservation. In contrast to express-highway-based urban sprawl, the author advocates a railway-based compact urban growth mode in China and provides related measures to implement it, such as large city in-advance development, concentrated urban growth, urban subway system construction, high-population-density community building, filling in urban growth, and intercity high-speed railway system construction. It provides a way of urbanization with higher land-use efficiency and lower energy consumption for developing countries in the new era.