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The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), an important industrial belt for food security for China, is facing the challenge of decreasing cultivated land in the process of rapid urbanization. In this case, how to improve the cultivated land use efficiency (CLUE) has become the top priority. Based on data from 108 cities of YREB from 2001 to 2019, we measured CLUE using a slack-based measure with undesirable output (SBM-Undesirable). The high-value area of CLUE shows a trend from multi-core agglomeration to two-core agglomeration, mainly concentrated in Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration and the northern part of the YREB. Then the paper examines the spatial effect of urbanization on CLUE using the Spatial Error Model (SEM). The result shows that population urbanization has significantly promoted the improvement of CLUE in YREB during the sample period. With each percentage point increase in population urbanization, CLUE will increase by 2.99%. Land urbanization has a negative impact on CLUE, for each percent increase in the expansion of urban spatial scope, CLUE will decrease by 0.06%. The spatial heterogeneity analysis shows that population urbanization in the lower reaches has significantly promoted CLUE, with a coefficient of 1.053. The population urbanization level in the middle and lower reaches of the region has no obvious effect on CLUE. The coefficient of land urbanization in the downstream region is 0.35, which significantly promotes CLUE. The coefficient in the middle is −0.26, which implies the CLUE decreases by 0.26% for every one percentage point increase in land urbanization. Land urbanization in the upper has no significant impact on the CLUE. Policy implications include improving the quality of the three major urban clusters along the YREB, building an ecologic protective screen in the upper, encouraging a new agricultural management system and detailed regulations related to the cultivated land protection in YREB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The majority of studies on Chinese urbanization have been focused on coastal areas, with little attention given to urban centers in the west. Western provinces, however, will unquestionably undergo significant urban change in the future as a result of the 'Go West' policy initiated in the 1990s. In this paper the authors examine the relationship between drivers of urban growth and land- use outcomes in Chengdu, capital of the western province of Sichuan, China. In the first part of this research, remotely sensed data are used to map changes in land cover in the greater Chengdu area and to investigate the spatial distribution of development with use of landscape metrics along seven urban-to-rural transects identified as key corridors of growth. Results indicate that the urbanized area increased by more than 350% between 1978 and 2002 in three distinct spatial trends: (a) near the urban fringe in all directions prior to 1990, (b) along transportation corridors, ring roads, and near satellite cities after 1990, and, finally, (c) infilling in southern and western areas (connecting satellite cities to the urban core) in the late 1990s. In the second part of this paper the authors connect patterns of growth with economic, land, and housing market reforms, which are explored in the context of urban planning initiatives. The results reveal that, physically, Chengdu is following trends witnessed in coastal cities of China, although the importance of various land-use drivers differs from that in the east (for example, in the low level of foreign direct investment to date). The information provided by the land-use analysis ultimately helped tailor policies and plans for better land management and reduced fragmentation of new development in the municipality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]