Projections of urban built-up area expansion and urbanization sustainability in China's cities through 2030

In the context of socioeconomic initiatives to address world development sustainability such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), China's urbanization with increasing intensity and quickening pace has always been central to debates over the past few decades. Although the United Nations (UN) recommend to estimate and predict the local-scale urbanization sustainability by using the SDG indicator 11.3.1: “ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate (LCRPGR)”, there remains a lack of reliable projections and applicable assessments at the city level, especially for the future urban expansion. Until now, limited knowledge of the urbanization sustainability dynamics in the next decade has been the primary challenge to inform the realization of urban sustainable development goal under the framework of SDGs. To evaluate the geographic region- and population size-specific urbanization sustainability at the city level in mainland China between 2020 and 2030, an integrated downscaling approach of trend extrapolation and regression analysis was developed based on historical statistics of urban built-up area and subnational scenarios of population and gross domestic product (GDP) under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). The SSPs-consistent urban built-up area projections across different scales showed that the logistic regression had a better modeling performance than the panel data regression, while there was little difference between the linear and exponential extrapolation methods. Despite the geographical heterogeneity and size-related disparity, the scenario modeling results suggested that the average value of LCRPGR indicator in mainland China was expected to decline continuously, and would reach at the ideal state with a coordination between urban expansion and population growth through 2030. Specifically, the population growth stagnation of cities in Northeast China and the allometric urban expansion of cities in Western China should be the focus of strengthened regulations, and the urban growth of megacities would experience a steady and slower trend compared to their surrounding super-large cities and large cities. In summary, China's urbanization process might have headed toward a more sustainable and coordinated future under feasible SSPs scenarios. The local-scale forecasts will not only fill the data gap of SSPs-consistent urban land demand for all county- and prefecture-level cities in mainland China, but can also provide a reference for forecasting and assessment of urbanization sustainability to meet the SDGs in urban areas such as indicator 11.3.1.