Research On The Land Resource Carrying Capacity Of Urban Agglomeration In China From The Perspective Of Sustainable Development

As a high level output of urbanization process,urban agglomeration plays a vital role in promoting the development of countries and regions.At the same time,intensive urbanization and industrialization activities happen in urban agglomeration regions,and these activities make urban agglomerations on the spotlight of various land resource issues.Such land resource issues as urban overexpansion,irrational arable land take and ecological degradation are hindering the sustainable development of urban agglomerations.As a result,the key to realize the mission of sustainable development is to improve the land resource carrying capacity of urban agglomerations.In order to understand and evaluate the land resource carrying capacity of urban agglomerations in China,and to explore the improvement strategies,this paper conduct a research on the land resource carrying capacity of Chinese urban agglomerations from the perspective of sustainable development.A typical urban agglomeration named Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration is employed as a study case to assist conducting empirical analysis.The main contents of this paper are as follows: 1)Establishing an evaluation model for urban agglomeration land resource carrying capacity,and this model includes three parts,namely conceptual model,evaluation framework and calculation model.2)Evaluating land resource carrying capacity of Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration,and analyzing its evolution by using the established evaluation model.3)Establishing a system dynamic model for land resource carrying capacity of Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration,and forecasting the future trend of land resource carrying capacity with multiple scenarios.4)Putting forward targeted policy implications that can be used to help improve land resource carrying capacity of Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration.The findings of this paper are as the following: 1)Urban agglomeration land resource carrying capacity is dynamic,and it can be divided into three dimensions: land resource economic carrying capacity,land resource social carrying capacity and land resource environmental carrying capacity.The value of land resource carrying capacity is determined by the support of land resource carriers and the pressure from loads on the land resources.2)The land resource carrying capacity of Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration is better than that of nearby non-urban agglomeration regions.3)Over the study period,land resource carrying capacities of nine cities located in Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration show an upward trend,but some cities show a coexistent trend of increase and decrease in the dimension of economic and environment for land resource carrying capacity.Cities with this trend in land resource economic carrying capacity are Huizhou,Zhongshan and Dongguan,and in the dimension of land resource environmental carrying capacity,there are Zhongshan and Zhaoqing.4)Land resource carrying capacity is spatially clustered,and cities with a higher comprehensive level are clustered in the Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration.Some cities located in peripheral area of urban agglomeratioin and area of non-urban agglomeration are mainly distributed randomly;In terms of three dimensions,the spatial distribution of land resource economic carrying capacity shows the evolution process of cluster-random-cluster,the spatial distribution of land resource social carrying capacity always shows the cluster distribution,and the spatial distribution of land resource environmental carrying capacity shows the evolution process of random-cluster-random.5)At the urban agglomeration level,maintaining the present status can help improve land resource carrying capacity,but scenarios beneficial to improving land resource carrying capacity at the city level various from cities to cities.This paper suggests government take the following measures to improve the land resource carrying capacity of Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration: 1)Considering the development demands of nearby non-urban agglomeration regions while making an urban agglomeration development plan,this consideration can lead local government to close the gap between urban agglomeration regions and non-urban agglomeration regions.2)Releasing the potential of market force on the cooperation between urban agglomeration regions and non-urban agglomeration regions,so that land resource carrying capacity of the whole region can be improved comprehensively.3)Taking urban cooperation into the administrative evaluation of the core cities in the urban agglomeration,and this measure can help core cities to create a driving effect on the improvement of land resource carrying capacity of surrounding cities.4)Legalizing the mechanism across cities in order to expanse the advantages of coordinated development in improving land resource carrying capacity.5)Different cities take different development strategies according to their own conditions while maintaining the overall development pattern on the urban agglomeration level.The findings of this paper is beneficial to helping planners and policy makers diagnose the status of land resource carrying capacity of urban agglomerations and forecast its future trend.The suggestions derived from the findings can provide reference for making decisions on the policies relating to urban agglomeration and land resource carrying capacity.Theoretically,this paper also perfects the theoretical framework of land resource carrying capacity and enriches literatures in the field of urban agglomeration studies.Researchers can also find inspirations from the research process of this paper.