Abstract:

How to obtain the greatest social and economic benefits with the least input of urban land resources is the center of regional ecological civilization construction. Based on municipal input-output data from 2005-2014, we introduce the SFA (stochastic frontier analysis) to measure the urban land use efficiency of 110 cities located in the Yangtze River Economic Zone, and then analyze the spatial association characteristics of the efficiency. The results show that: (1) Urban land use efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Zone increases from 0.344 to 0.53 during 2005-2014, showing a significant growth trend with a cumulative growth rate of 54.07%. The efficiency growth rate of cities in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River is faster than that of cities in the middle and lower reaches. There is great growth potential across the whole area. (2) The urban land use efficiency shows a "bar-like" distribution across the whole area, which gradually decreases from the east to the west. Not only does it present great differences within each province, but also the inter-provincial differences and differences among the upper, middle and lower reaches are extremely evident. The total land use efficiency of cities in the lower reaches is the highest, followed by cities in the middle reaches and cities in the upper reaches. (3) The Moran's I of the study area is above 0 and increases year on year, which indicates that the land use efficiency among cities has positive spatial correlation, and the agglomeration level is enhanced. The LISA (local indicators of spatial association) reveals the characteristics of "small agglomeration and large dispersion". The High-High agglomeration area spreads outward along Zhejiang and Shanghai, while the areas with a Low-Low agglomeration pattern are mainly concentrated in northern Anhui province and northern Sichuan province. To sum up, the research framework and results are of great significance to sustainable land resource use and regional coordinated development.

Key words: land use efficiency, stochastic frontier analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis, spatiotemporal patterns, Yangtze River Economic Zone