With the development of the urban economy and population growth, the demand for urban construction land continues to rise. Addressing the challenges of land protection and ecological security calls for the exploration of new approaches. This study emphasizes a sustainable solution by emphasizing in-depth exploration of existing land resources, moving away from the traditional “expanding the pie” model of urban development. Specifically, we selected land parcels in Shenzhen city from 2010 to 2020 that met the criteria for urban renewal and transformation as evaluation units, further categorized into residential, industrial, and commercial land for transformation. From multiple perspectives, including geological conditions, building conditions, agglomeration, social factors, and the degree of completeness of public facilities, we constructed an evaluation system comprising 23 indicators to quantify the potential for urban renewal of these units. Through the AET (AHP-EWM-TOPSIS) model analysis for assessing the potential of urban renewal and transformation, we classified the transformation parcels into different potential levels based on the optimized solutions from the model. Finally, we validated the results using the planned land units implemented in Shenzhen from 2010 to 2020, achieving an accuracy of 81% in matching the spatial distribution of potential levels with the actual situation. The comprehensive evaluation results from the model provide a basis for optimizing and enhancing sustainable urban renewal. This research contributes to the formulation of informed decisions and strategic urban development planning, enabling a more cautious and resource-efficient approach to address the challenges of urban expansion.

Rapid urban expansion and the growing spatial requirements of utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) deployment compete for the same category of land—flat, accessible, and high-insolation terrain—yet the scale, trajectory, and planning-sensitivity of this conflict remain poorly characterised at the regional level. This study quantifies the spatiotemporal competition between urban construction land and PV-suitable land in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) from 2000 to 2020 and projects its evolution to 2030 under three development scenarios. Built-up areas were extracted for three epochs using a Random Forest (RF) classifier on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, achieving overall accuracies of 87.7–94.5% and Kappa coefficients of 0.718–0.739. PV site suitability was evaluated through a hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) framework combining Boolean exclusion constraints with an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-based Weighted Linear Combination model; the weight structure was validated by a Consistency Ratio of 0.006, and a One-At-a-Time sensitivity analysis confirmed spatial robustness across threshold scenarios. Spatial overlay analysis reveals that the cumulative area of PV-suitable land occupied by urban built-up uses grew from 15,862 km² in 2000 to 23,872 km² in 2020, representing an incremental loss of 8010 km² over two decades. Future conflict was projected using the PLUS model, calibrated on 2010–2020 observed expansion and validated against the 2020 classified map (OA = 93.99%, Kappa = 0.91). Under the Business-as-Usual (BAU) scenario, 33,368 km² of currently open PV-suitable land faces urban encroachment by 2030; the Ecological Conservation Priority (ECP) scenario reduces this figure to approximately 30,767 km², while the Economic Development (ED) scenario yields a near-identical outcome to BAU, indicating that development velocity alone does not determine the spatial extent of conflict—the allocation of growth does. These findings provide a quantitative basis for designating energy-strategic reserve zones within national spatial planning frameworks and demonstrate that targeted spatial governance, applied at high-pressure locations, can substantially slow the erosion of the region’s solar energy land base.