Multi-scales urban-rural integrated development and land-use transition: The story of China

Urban–rural integrated (URI) development strategy is designed to solve the accumulated urban–rural gap of China in the rapid urbanization stage. As the significant link in the interaction of human society and nature, the way of land use has an important impact on URI development. Most existing research evaluates the development level of URI in China from the spatiotemporal evolution path. However, due to the caliber of statistical data and differences in development stage, existing studies mostly focus on a single scale. And few studies have conducted the evaluation of URI level from multi-scales. We unified the evaluation index system of URI and land-use transition at different scales, and introduced panel quantile regression model to calculate the response of URI to land-use transition at different scales. The results of our study show that the impact of land-use transition on URI development exhibits regional and multi-scale characteristics. At the macro scale, rational growth of urban construction land will more effectively promote URI development in underdeveloped areas. At the meso and micro scales, cities (counties) with different URI development levels coexist, and for highly urbanized cities (counties), there is little benefit from promoting the expansion of construction land, and it is urgent to optimize land-use efficiency and land spatial morphology. Lagging development areas need orderly urban–rural land development and construction, optimize land-use functions, and accelerate URI development. Our results indicate that in urban–rural land management and spatial governance, it is necessary to coordinate the overall benefits and local benefits at different scales and develop a land-use transition model that conforms to the regional reality to effectively promote comprehensive URI development.