Research on land utilization in the process of urbanization of Central Region in China

The urbanization is the fundamental solution to intensive use and optimization of urban land resources. The urban sprawl is the comprehensive outcome that population factors, economic factors, social factors and other factors exert influences on the utilization of land. However, little research has been done in the field of the interaction between the process of urbanization and the land-use change. The article takes the central region as the research object, where many conflicts on imbalanced supply and demand of land-use unavoidably occur between the widespread acceleration of industrialization and safeguard of the security of national grain reserve as the irreplaceable agriculture base. Data for the analysis are drawn from the detailed land use investigation at the provincial level from 1996 to 2004. Based on the analysis of the characteristics of temporal and spatial variation of land utilization, interaction linkage of urbanization and the land-use change is examined from the perspectives of the change of cultivated land area, agricultural structure adjustment and non-agricultural process of various factors by using Pearson's correlation coefficient test. The results indicate that the urbanization and the industrialization, the level of population development and economic progress of central region are all the significant factors contributed to the decrease of cultivated land area. Meanwhile the dual conversions of the rural population's identity and land-use pattern have been promoted by the process of urbanization, bringing about the synchronously-decreasing trend of the rural population and the per capita cultivated land. The land-use structure evolution has also been promoted by the process of urbanization to some extent, along with the upgrading of agricultural structure. Empirical analysis of interaction between the land use conversion and the non-agricultural circulation of population and economic component also confirms that the main driving force for urban encroachment on cultivated land in central China is economic development. As the result of rapid enhancement of urbanization in certain areas, the shift from rural residents to urban residents is significantly related to the land-use change for non-agricultural construction. ? Chinese Research Institute of Construction Management.EI