An evolution perspective on the urban land carrying capacity in the urbanization era of China

Abstract The past few decades witness a typical urbanization era in large developing countries such as China. In line with the urbanization process, land resources have inevitably presented a series of changes. The evolution of urban land carrying capacity (ULCC) is appreciated as a yardstick for guiding towards sustainable urban development. This paper therefore proposes an alternative method from carrier-load perspective for investigating the evolution of ULCC performance in China during the rapid urbanization era of 2012–2017. The data employed for analysis is collected from 290 Chinese prefectural-level cities. Results indicate that ULCC performance in the urbanizing China has been evolving towards a better state, for which 94% of the surveyed cities have made progress. However, significant disparity exists between cities on ULCC evolution performance, in particular, mega cities tend to have better ULCC evolution performance. Some cities may have better evolution performance although they have a poor average ULCC value. Contrarily, some cities may present poor evolution performance but they carry a better average ULCC value. The research findings provide valuable references not only for policy-makers to better understand the state of ULCC across the country, and appreciate inspiring experiences and lessons for implementing effective tailor-made measures to improve the ULCC performance, but also for enriching the literature in land resource management.