Spatiotemporal impacts of urban structure upon urban land-use efficiency: Evidence from 280 cities in China

The looming challenge of global land scarcity entails shaping urban structure towards more efficient land use. To figure out how urban structure affects urban land-use efficiency (ULUE), this study first establishes a ULUE assessment method by applying the Super-SBM DEA model, and then characterizes the urban structure via two metrics of monocentricity and aggregation, and further employs GTWR model to examine the spatiotemporal impacts of urban structure upon ULUE. By setting up a four-year dataset for 280 Chinese cities, we found that urban structure does play significant implications for ULUE improvement and its impacts manifest explicit spatial-temporal variations in the context of urban China. The monocentric urban structure poses generally positive effects, while such driving effects saw a decrease in East and Central China in contrary to an increase in West China. Aggregation of urban structure poses a bidirectional (driving and suppressing) effect, while a drop in its driving effects and a growth in its suppressing effects are captured. Accordingly, from a monocentricity-aggregation bi-dimensional perspective, tailor-made urban planning strategies are recommended for improving individual city's ULUE. We tend to argue that land use policies need to be dynamically adjusted given the spatially varying and temporally evolving impacts of urban structure upon ULUE.