Promoting cultivated land use efficiency (CLUE) coordinated development in various major function-oriented zones is a measure to deal with unbalanced development of territorial space in China. Taking the optimized development, key development, agricultural production, ecological function, and ecological economic zones of Zhejiang province as research objects, this study incorporated agricultural carbon emission into the measurement framework of CLUE and analyzed the regional disparity and the convergence of CLUE from 2008 to 2017, using slack-based measure model (SBM), the Theil index, and convergence theory. The main results are as follows: (1) The CLUE value that considered agricultural carbon emissions was lower than the CLUE value that did not consider agricultural carbon emissions; thus, agricultural carbon emissions had a negative effect on CLUE. (2) The CLUE value of the five major function-oriented zones showed an increasing trend; after ranking the CLUE value, the CLUE of the optimized development zones was the highest, followed by the ecological function, ecological economic, and key development zones, and that of the agricultural production zones was the lowest, indicating significant regional disparity. (3) The overall disparity of CLUE presented an upward trend, and the within-regional disparity is the main source of the overall disparity. (4) Neither σ convergence nor absolute β convergence occurred in the CLUE of the five major function-oriented zones, but conditional β convergence occurred among the optimized development and ecological economic zones. Although the planning of major function-oriented zones reflects the regional disparity and convergence of CLUE to some extent, the CLUE under the control of major function-oriented zones is not consistent with the function positioning.

Unlocking the relationship between regional integration and urban green development efficiency (UGDE) is of great importance for boosting regional high-quality development and promoting sustainable urban development patterns. Although studies have analyzed the spatio-temporal evolution and influencing factors of regional integration and UGDE, the impact of regional integration on UGDE remains untested. In this paper, we construct a conceptual framework to analyze how regional integration can influence UGDE through promoting the factors mobility and optimizing the industrial layout. In addition, we further choose the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR), a rapidly growing urban agglomeration in central China, as a case to investigate the spatial spillover effect of regional integration on UGDE from 2003 to 2017. We quantify the UGDE with a random forest model, then estimate the underlying determinants of the UGDE with a spatial Durbin model. Results indicated that (1) the regional integration level and the UGDE index of the UAMRYR and its three sub-urban agglomerations show an increasing trend; (2) for every 1% increase in the level of regional integration, the level of UGDE will increase by 0.8307%; (3) the impact of regional integration on UGDE has obvious regional heterogeneity; while playing a promoting effect in the Wuhan urban agglomeration and the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration, it shows an inhibitory effect in the Poyang Lake urban agglomeration. We conclude that regional integration in agglomeration areas can accelerate the factors flow and optimize the industrial layout for improving UGDE.

Land fragmentation has become a serious obstacle to agricultural production, and land transfer and consolidation are traditionally emphasized as the two most effective solutions to this quandary. To identify the extent of land fragmentation accurately and systematically, this study selected the number of plots, the average size of plots, and the average distance between plots to calculate the land fragmentation index (LFI). Taking the Wuhan metropolitan area as a case study, this study examined the effectiveness of farmer-led land transfer and consolidation on land fragmentation. The main results are as follows: (a) most of the transferred plots and contracted plots were not spatially adjacent, suggesting that the tenants could not merge and consolidate both plots; (b) land transfer caused the LFI to increase by 2.85%, suggesting that land transfer had intensified the degree of land fragmentation to some extent; (c) if the transferred and contracted plots were non-adjacent or adjacent but unmerged and unconsolidated, then the LFI might increase or decrease; (d) if the transferred and contracted plots were spatially adjacent, merged, and consolidated, then the LFI decreased significantly.

To achieve sustainable development, the improvement of villagers’ subjective well-being has become the main policy goal of urban village renewal. However, the mechanism of how urban village renewal affects subjective well-being remains untested in previous research. Utilizing the survey data on 414 resettled households in the urban village renewal through a random sample method in Wuhan, China, we adopted the intermediary model to test the mechanism of how urban village renewal affects the resettled villagers’ subjective well-being. We explored the contribution rate of each intermediary variable to subjective well-being through Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and, consequently, proposed corresponding policy suggestions. The results show that the renewal of urban villages can improve the economic conditions, housing conditions, social security status, and living environments of residents and significantly enhance the subjective well-being of the resettled villagers and households. The multi-dimensional changes resulting from the renewal of urban villages increase subjective well-being through complete mediation. The Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition results demonstrate that improvement of the living environment has the strongest influence on subjective well-being, with a contribution rate of 69.81%. In the future, the renewal of urban villages should focus on environmental improvement, protect neighborhood networks, and promote community engagement, so as to realize the sustainable redevelopment of urban villages.