As a unique phenomenon of urbanisation in China, the emergence of urban villages has attracted considerable attention from the academic community. Adopting an institutional approach on land development, this study analyses how the land property rights regime affects village-led land development behaviours and spatial outcomes in urban villages. Using a set of reliable data from Shenzhen, the empirical study shows that, although unequal land rights under the current land property rights regime impose severe institutional constraints to the development of urban villages, they actually play a much more important and diversified role in China’s urbanisation than previously recognised. As the primary developers of urban villages, villagers have adopted various land development strategies in response to the changing market environment and internal economic conditions in the dynamic urbanisation process. These dynamic strategies have contributed to the coexistence of sub-optimal industrial development and high-quality housing development in urban villages.

The redevelopment and transformation of industrial land has become an important part of urban renewal in China. This study adopts a spatial perspective to investigate the transformation of industrial land in Shenzhen based on a set of reliable data of all urban redevelopment projects of industrial land from 2010 to 2018. Research shows that the development of the real estate market, local government’s strategic demand for upgrading industrial structure, and the policy objective of improving land use intensity are important factors that affect the industrial land transformation. Industrial land has decreased significantly in urban renewal. About 881.79 ha (76.82%) of industrial land has been transformed into commercial, residential, and new industrial spaces. The planned industrial space is mainly located in the central and western regions, while the new commercial and residential spaces are mainly located outside the Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Redevelopment of industrial land has also transferred a certain scale of land to local governments for providing public facilities with an uneven spatial distribution between SEZ and non-SEZ. Therefore, industrial land transformation has brought significant effects on the urban spatial structure of this city. The study concludes with an evaluation of current industrial land redevelopment activities and provides suggestions for sustainable land development in the future.

“Land finance” refers to the key fiscal strategy in which local governments in China generate revenue through land grant premiums and land tax revenues. A burgeoning body of literature has focused on the driving factors of China’s land finance from different aspects including fiscal decentralization, revenue decentralization, competition among local governments, land marketization, infrastructure development, and economic development. However, little research has provided a comprehensive perspective integrating social, economic and institutional aspects to investigate the driving forces of these unique and profound issues in China. This study aims to investigate the driving factors and working mechanism of land finance. A theoretical and empirical model was proposed using soft budget constraint theory and least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The panel data of 35 Chinese major cities were assessed between 2006 and 2015. The empirical results contend the following: (1) the land transfer and fiscal systems provide the key impetus for land financing because the land transfer system forms a stable modality, and the fiscal system is an important incentive for land financing; (2) the effects of the economic development and political system are insignificant; and (3) the political and land systems significantly influence economic development. Our contributions focus on two aspects. Firstly, a comprehensive framework of factors germane to land finance is constructed. Secondly, a new research methodology for land use study is proposed. To the best of our knowledge, the current study is the first to employ the PLS-SEM method to delineate and verify the influence paths between multiple driving factors and land finance in different cities. Hence, research reliability can be improved.

The redevelopment of urban villages is a prominent part of urban renewal in China, which has attracted much attention from the academic community. However, the understanding of when and where the redevelopment of urban villages occurs is still limited partly because of the lack of empirical analysis. Through exploratory spatial data and overlay analyses, this study examines the spatio-temporal distribution characteristics based on data from 277 urban village redevelopment projects in Shenzhen, China, between 2010 and 2018. Results demonstrate that the redevelopment of urban villages occurs in central and suburban areas but rarely occurs in the periphery of the city. The overall spatial distribution is spatially clustered, having become increasingly significant from 2010 to 2018. In the beginning, the redevelopment of urban villages was dispersed in diverse areas and partly expanded into adjacent neighbourhoods. A majority of redevelopment took place in areas near the planning urban centres and the planning subway stations, which are almost in Density Zones I–III. The findings of this study contribute to new spatio-temporal perspectives in the global process mechanism of urban village redevelopment and call for special attention to the significant influences of state intervention, which is an informative reference for future sustainable urban development.