The impact of urbanization policy on land use change: A scenario analysis

The rapid urbanization has led to extensive land use change particularly in those developing countries. In line with the development of urbanization, arable land is decreasing dramatically, which presents the threat to the food security for human being. It is therefore essential to understand the level of impacts of urbanization on the land use change. This paper introduces a dynamic systems based method for assessing the impacts of urbanization policy on land use change with reference to the urbanization practice in China. Four typical policy scenarios are identified in implementing urbanization in China, including balanced development driven by planning, uneven development driven by planning, balanced development driven by market and uneven development driven by market and their impacts on land use change are analyzed through a dynamic system model. Land use change is considered as a dynamic system model composing five subsystems: urbanization, social, economic, environmental and land use subsystems. The key attributes in these five subsystems are interactive and they are dynamic variables. The assessment on the impacts of urbanization policy to land use change is demonstrated through employing the software iThink to the land use change dynamic model, using the data collected from the Jinyun County in China. The findings suggest that the urban construction land will continue to increase in the foreseeable future in China, whilst the agricultural land will gradually decrease. Nevertheless, different policy scenarios will have different impacts on these land changes. Thus decision makers can adopt different policies to control the rate of land use change. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.