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There is a large amount of population moved from countryside to cities in China during its urbanization in the past two decades. The majority of these people have no formal qualifications for city residency, and they are so-called ‘floating population’. The increase of this group of people has induced the pressure of land use in cities, and the contradiction between the demand and the supply of urban land has been intensifying particularly in those developed regions in China. This paper examines the impacts of floating population on urban land by presenting the interrelations between floating population and urban land expansion from the perspective of production land and living land. Structural equation model (SEM) is employed in conducting the analysis. The result shows that the floating population alone does not have direct effect on urban land expansion, but have indirect impacts through engaging in the production or living process. It is particularly interesting that floating people's living conditions have no direct positive effect on the increase of construction land. Based on the research results, suggestions are offered for improvements in government policy towards a more sustainable and integrated urbanization, including the provision of housing support, the formation of more urbanized society and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In recent years, there has been rapid urbanization worldwide, resulting in both benefits and problems. Sustainable urbanization has become an important aspect in promoting sustainable development. Existing studies have introduced various methodologies to guide urbanization towards sustainable practices. The application of these methods has contributed to improving urban sustainability. To further support the effective applications of the principles of sustainable urbanization, a tool is needed to evaluate whether a particular process of urbanization is sustainable. In this paper, we introduce an alternative model for evaluating sustainable urbanization by investigating the relationship between urbanization and urban sustainability. The practice of sustainable urbanization is defined as a dynamic process that enables urban sustainability to improve or to maintain a certain level of practice. By employing this definition, we introduce a sustainable urbanization elasticity coefficient eSU , which is defined by two parameters: urbanization velocity (VμR ) and urban sustainability velocity (VμS ). The sustainability of an urbanization process is measured by the value of eSU or read from the VμR –VμS coordinate. A case study demonstrates the application of the measure eSU and the VμR –VμS coordinate. The proposed model is an effective tool to help policy makers understand whether the urbanization processes they support are sustainable and thus whether to correct practices. The model also allows comparison of different urbanization practices and thereby encourages the sharing of successful experiences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]