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Abstract This paper develops a new paradigm to analyze the eco-efficiency of Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) in China and makes a first empirical attempt at examining whether the eco-efficiency in urban agglomerations (UA-s) outperform Non-urban agglomerations (Non-UA-s), or driving the Non-UA-s in promoting eco-efficiency using a dataset of 108 prefectural-level cities during 2003–2014. The main findings are as follows. First, the eco-efficiency of YREB gradually increases during the study period. Cities in UA-s with higher eco-efficiency experience an increasing spatial agglomeration while those in Non-UA-s show a slight downward shift. Second, in terms of eco-efficiency, both statistical test and econometrical test confirm that cities in UA-s outperform those in Non-UA-s. Third, the global and club convergence of eco-efficiency in YREB is ascertained. Forth, the eco-efficiency of UA-s exerts backwash effects on those in Non-UA-s, along with decreasing the convergence speed of eco-efficiency. Special issues are briefly discussed, lastly. Highlights • A new analysis paradigm is developed to explore the YREB's eco-efficiency. • Temporal-spatial evolution and empirical tests are conducted, indicating a proof that eco-efficiency in urban agglomerations outperform that in Non-urban agglomerations. • Urban agglomerations have backwash effects and slight constraints to Non-urban agglomerations in terms of eco-efficiency. • Some special issues are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is the prior region for achieving China’s strategic development with both economic and ecological goals. Since YREB covers more than 500 million people within a large area, the unbalanced urban sustainable development cannot be neglected. Different from the previous studies, this paper adopts an index of urban state carrying capacity (USCC) to assess the sustainable development in YREB. USCC can reflect the positive effects clearly, and evaluate the carrying capacity without the distortion from the opposite side. The assessment method combines the framework of Indicator-Benchmark Comparison (IBC) and the method of Analytical hieratical process (AHP), and sets up the indicator system for USCC from four perspectives. Based on the panel data for the years 2006–2014 in three scale levels, the analyses of temporal and spatial differentiation are conducted to discuss the unbalanced development in YREB. The results present that the eastern sub-UAs have much higher USCC values than the western ones significantly. The provincial cities and municipalities with higher USCC have strong impacts on their neighborhood cities around them. Further policies are suggested to support for other unbalanced sustainable development urban agglomerations like YREB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China experienced rapid economic growth, non-agricultural land, particularly industrial land, expanded significantly within its peri-urban areas. This paper takes two typical peri-urban areas: Jiangyin in the Yangtze River Delta and Shunde in the Pearl River Delta, as cases, and applies landscape ecology indices to analyze land use dynamics through overlay of their land use maps from 2001 to 2010. This research reveals that local cadres such as township governments and village collectives utilize land finance as a strategy to contest the reshuffling of central-local power brought about by the 1994 tax-sharing scheme. Meanwhile, under the stringent land quota system, local cadres allocated most quotas to the industrial sector in order to encourage economic growth. However, the fragmented governance regime, including county/city, township to administrative village and natural village, led to land fragmentation, which had adverse impacts on sustainable development. In general, the research on land use of peri-urban areas requires a comprehensive perspective of social, economic and institutional aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Suzhou is located at the lower reaches of the Yangtze River in southeastern Jiangsu, China. It is part of the Su-Xi-Chang area including Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou. As one of the most developed areas in China, this region has suffered from severe land subsidence caused by extensive groundwater exploitation since 1980s. The land subsidence was controlled by prohibition of groundwater exploration in the past several years. However, the surface water pollution prompted a new task of how to sustainably utilize the groundwater resource, especially to satisfy the emergency demands of water supply. In this paper, we took Suzhou as a representative case to discuss how to develop groundwater resources while controlling the land subsidence. The relationship between the deformation and the groundwater level was analyzed, with focus on the deformation features after the period of groundwater exploitation ban. The results confirmed the conclusion by Shi et al. (2007, 2008a): even in the period of rising groundwater level, same units may manifest different deformation characteristics, such as elasticity, elasto-plasticity, and visco-elasto-plasticity, at different locations of the cone of depression. A land subsidence model that couples a 3-D groundwater model and a 1-D deformation model was developed to simulate the groundwater level and deformation. A high-resolution local grid (child model) for Suzhou was built based on the regional land subsidence model of Su-Xi-Chang area by Wu et al. (2009). The model was used for a number of predictive scenarios up to the year of 2012 to examine how to develop sustainable use of groundwater resources under the conditions of land subsidence control. Our results indicated that about 3.08×107 m3/a groundwater could be provided as emergency and standby water source while meeting the land subsidence control target of 10mm/a. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]