The Spatial Disparities of Land-Use Efficiency in Mainland China from 2000 to 2015

Understanding the sustainable development goal (SDG) 11.3.1-ratio of land consumption rate (LCR) to population growth rate (PGR) is an important prerequisite for planning a guide for sustainable urbanization. However, little is known regarding the degree of accuracy of the estimated LCR due to the inconsistency of data on built-up areas. We extracted four built-up areas, based on inverse S-shaped law and area proportion method, and produced more precise built-up area data (LS_BUA) for the period 2000–2015. Chinese population density data in 2000–2015 was generated based on 26 million points of interest, 19 million roads, other multi-source data, and random forest (RF). Finally, the coupling between LCR and PGR for 340 Chinese cities was calculated during the same period. The results showed that (1) the accuracy of LS_BUA was higher than that of the other built-up area data production methods; (2) the accuracy of test sets in RF exceeded 0.86; (3) the LCR value of mainland China was 0.024 and the PGR value was 0.019 during 2000–2015. The LCR consistently exceeded the PGR and the coordination relationship between LCR and PGR continued to deteriorate. Our research eliminated the difference of SDG 11.3.1 from different data sources and could therefore help decision makers balance land consumption and population growth.