Deconstructing the driving factors of land development intensity from multi-scale in differentiated functional zones

Land development intensity (LDI) is an important indicator of how much human exploitation of land resources. Against the background of rapid urbanization and industrialization, in order to curb the over-occupation of agricultural and ecological space by urbanized space, China has proposed the Major Functional Zoning Planning (MFZP) as a new spatial governance model, which attempts to implement differentiated LDI control according to the functional positioning of different regions. To observe the spatio-temporal evolution and drivers of LDI in the first five years since the implementation of the MFZP, we chose the Yangtze River Delta, the most urbanized region in China, as a case area. The multi-scale distribution pattern of LDI was analyzed by combining macro and micro scales, and a new spatial measurement method integrating global and local regression models was developed to quantitatively deconstruct the natural-human drivers of LDI in different functional zones. Results demonstrate that LDI decreases in a gradient of the urbanized zone (UZ) > main agricultural production zone (MAPZ) > key ecological function zone (KEFZ). In the UZ, LDI is influenced by natural-human multi factors, e.g., terrain conditions (SLP), proportion of cultivated land area (PCL), proportion of ecologically important area (EID), population urbanization rate (PUR), GDP per capita (PGDP), fixed asset investment size per land (FAI) and fiscal expenditure as a percentage of GDP (FD). The LDI in the MAPZ is mainly affected by the facilitating role of PCL, EID, FAI, and the prominent role of FD, while that in the KEFZ is mainly inhibited by SLP, EID, and driven by the PGDP. The diverse drivers of LDI in different functional zones remind us to implement differentiated spatial control according to functional positioning and to adopt refined policy tools of zoning and classification to ensure that land resources within each type of functional zone can be used sustainably.