Industrial agglomeration is an important economic phenomenon in urban areas and has significant effects on land use efficiency (LUE) due to external economies of scale. A bourgeoning body of literature has investigated the effects of industrial agglomeration. However, the relationship between industrial agglomeration and land use efficiency has rarely been discussed in China. To fill this gap, this study aims to explore the effects of industrial agglomeration on LUE and the characteristics of its spatial distribution. In this study, the spatial effects of industrial agglomeration of 12 detailed sectors on LUE are estimated through the geographical weighted regression model. Socioeconomic data of 289 prefecture-level cities in China are utilized for the analysis. Results show several important findings. First, spatial effects of industrial agglomerations on LUE are evident in three grand city clusters, i.e. the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta. Second, spatial patterns and distributions of industrial agglomeration effects on LUE vary across regions. Third, the significance of industrial agglomeration effects on LUE between 2-digit industrial sectors is different. The merits of this study lie in three aspects: First, a theoretical framework is explored to analyze the impacts of industrial agglomeration on LUE based on the expanded Cobb–Douglas production function; Second, the impacts of industrial sectors on LUE are estimated from a spatial perspective; Third, some policy implications for a more economically efficient urban spatial development are suggested.

Land use transition and its eco-environmental effects are important research topics. Its essence is the process that human activities exert interference to the ecological environment in the process of social and economic development, and the ecosystem resists interference and recovers and adapts to interference. The article starts from the transition of land use dominant morphology and takes ecological resilience as the breakthrough point. Based on four periods of land use data, this article studied the spatio-temporal evolution of land use and ecological resilience and the response of ecological resilience to land use transition in China from 1990 to 2020. The results showed as follows: (1) During the study period, the construction land in China continued to increase, and the forest land, grassland, and farmland showed a fluctuating trend. (2) The spatial distribution pattern of ecological resilience showed the characteristics of “high in the southeast and low in the northwest”. The mean value and total value of ecological resilience in the region decreased first and then increased, taking 2010 as the dividing line. The difference in ecological resilience increased first and then decreased. (3) Ecological land and construction land are the main types of land that affect the changes in ecological resilience. The higher the proportion of ecological lands such as forest land, grassland, and waters, the smaller the variable coefficient of ecological resilience. The higher the proportion of construction land, the greater the difference in ecosystem elasticity among different types of areas.

Through an evolution from an emerging marketing narrative to a geographical fact around the globe, smart city is increasingly understood as a city’s effort to make itself smart. There seems no single city in the world to be commonly recognized as a real smart city yet, albeit many cities have already tried hard in this missionary commitment. Yet some common features can still be seen and identified, particularly from the urban governance perspective. This article explores the practice of smart city construction in China through a lens of governance by observing the interactive involvement of key stakeholders in the process. By taking three cities (Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Shanghai) in China as study cases, a conceptual framework is established in which three sets of actors, i.e., ICT-related enterprises, government, and civil society, and, accordingly, three types of approaches, i.e., ICT-led, planning-led, and place-making-and-community-oriented, are identified. It is found that the evolution of smart city construction rather follows a nonlinear trajectory and is very dependent on whether or not the primary actors and related stakeholders can form an affirmative acting power in triggering the city’s implementation. In other words, there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to smart city construction. Each city may have its specialization in smartness based on awareness of and respecting its unique existing setting. The empirical study also shows that smart city construction tends to be converged in recognition that the core of smart city is not the smartness of technology but the smartness of all institutions and people enabled to utilize smart tools properly and efficiently in pursuit of people’s well-being, institutional capacity building, and better spatial arrangement towards a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive city in and for the future. From a geographical perspective, that is how to build a smart urban space to make the city a better place to not just accommodate but facilitate and meet people’s increasing demand for a better life in their living places.