Assessing the Potential of Rural Settlement Land Consolidation in China: A Method Based on Comprehensive Evaluation of Restricted Factors

Mengdi Zhang, Xiao Wang, Zengxiang Zhang and Xiaoli Zhao
Additional contact information
Mengdi Zhang: Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Xiao Wang: Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Zengxiang Zhang: Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Xiaoli Zhao: Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 9, 1-20

Abstract: Rural settlement land consolidation potential calculation is the basic work of land consolidation. An accurate potential is essential to rural development planners and policy makers as a project target or prediction. The traditional calculation methods include the per capita/household construction land method, idle rural residential land method, and comprehensive evaluation method. Though there have been some improvements, the potential for calculation methods on a national level is still limited. This article illustrates a new method for calculating the consolidation potential of rural settlement land, based on field data and the restructuring restrictions applicable to each rural land parcel in China. The field data was from Shandong Province because it lies within the country’s biggest grain-producing area with the largest distribution density of rural settlements. It is an excellent representative sample for rural settlement land consolidation, offering a microcosm of rural development in China. For the study’s comprehensive evaluation system, due to the lack of nationwide field survey data, the potential of Shandong Province was chosen as the standard value. We selected indicators concerning land resources, depopulation, transportation accessibility, local economic development, urbanization, and natural conditions to build an evaluation system. We then calculated the potential of each province according to their coefficients and field data from Shandong Province. Every province except Taiwan (for which no data were available) was divided into five zones for rural settlement land consolidation: the most-suitable zone, suitable zone, general zone, restricted zone, and most-restricted zone. The total rate of land consolidation is estimated at 0.24 for 2010 and forecast at 0.33 for 2020, while those years’ respective consolidation potentials are 32,777.92 km 2 and 44,707.81 km 2 . The rate is the total rural settlement land before land consolidation divided by added cultivated land after consolidation. The higher the rate, more effective the land consolidation is.

Keywords: rural settlement; land consolidation; restricted factor; remote sensing; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3102/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3102/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:9:p:3102-:d:166812

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().