Analyzing the Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Urban Land Use Expansion and Its Influencing Factors in Zhejiang Province, China

The 21st century expansion of built-up areas due to rapid urbanization has recently been at the forefront of global land use/land cover research. Knowledge of the changing dynamics of urban land use is crucial for the monitoring of urbanization and the promotion of sustainable urban development. In this paper, Zhejiang Province was selected as the study area. It is a region with rapid urban growth located along the southeastern coast of China, with a highly developed economy but with a shortage of land resources. We employed remotely sensed and socio-economic panel data for the period between 1990 and 2020 to monitor urban land use changes and utilized the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to examine the urbanization process and the various driving factors of rapid urban expansion in Zhejiang Province, China, from 1990 to 2020. The study’s results revealed substantial urban growth of about 6899.59 km(2), i.e., 6.6%, whereas agricultural land decreased by 4320.68 km(2), i.e., 4.19%. The rapid urban development was primarily attributed to the transformation of farmlands, forestlands, and water bodies into built-up areas by nearly 86.9%, 6.94%, and 6.06%, respectively. The built-up areas revealed features of spatial clustering. The study showed that the expansion hotspots were mainly distributed within the urban fabric of cities such as Hangzhou, Ningbo, Jinhua–Yiwu, and Wenzhou–Taizhou. The results further revealed the substantial influence of urban growth on the local areas of the province. As the core explanatory variables, population and economic development significantly promoted local urban expansion. The study’s findings indicated a positive spatial spillover effect as regards the influence of economic development on the study area’s urban growth, whereas the spatial spillover effect of the population was negative. Therefore, economic development was a major driving factor contributing immensely to the expansion of urban areas in Zhejiang Province, especially in the 26 mountainous counties of the province. The study enriches our understanding of the transformation of LULC and the changing dynamics of urban areas in China and provides the necessary research data that are vital for urban land-use planners and decision-makers to overcome the negative consequences of the expansion of urban areas due to the continuous economic growth of China.