Carbon emissions from land use account for a significant portion of anthropogenic carbon emissions. As an important policy instrument for regulating land use, spatial planning can shape future land patterns, thereby influencing human activities and associated carbon emissions. This review presents a scientometric analysis of important articles between 2000 and 2024 on the impacts of land use and spatial planning on carbon emissions, and it summarizes the key research topics, methods, and main consensus. Scientometric and qualitative analysis methods were used. The results showed the following: (1) The number of articles published reveals an increasing trend, especially after 2009, with China, the USA, and England paying more attention to it. (2) Studies mainly focus on four key research topics: the impacts of land use and land cover change (LULCC) on carbon stocks, the relationship between land use structure/spatial form and carbon emissions, and the paths and schemes for low-carbon spatial planning. (3) Studies usually use upscale, homoscale, and downscale routes to correlate carbon emissions to land and then use comparative analysis, regression analysis, spatial analysis, and scenario simulation methods to conduct further analyses. (4) Studies have yielded some consensus: human land use can influence carbon emissions through LULCC, land use structure and spatial form, and spatial planning can reduce carbon emissions. In conclusion, this paper proposes that future research could be deepened in the following aspects: introducing land property rights and spatial planning management systems as research preconditions; exploring the sensitivity of carbon emissions from human activities to land space; strengthening research on low-carbon planning at medium- and long-term time scales and micro- and meso-spatial scales.

This study aims to deconstruct the collective, the subject of collective land ownership. With respect for the logic of the formation of collective land ownership, we propose the “transfreserve” mode to portray the division of rural land rights between the members and the organization in the transformation from private ownership to collective ownership. This idea can be expressed as, prompted by the public power of the state, each farmer as the owner of rural land having to transfer part of his/her rights to the organization when associating, meanwhile each one still reserves part of his/her rights. We term the rights transferred to the organization as special legal person ownership, while the rights reserved by each farmer are called membership rights. The rights exercised by all members on the basis of membership rights are the autonomous rights. In terms of the property rights, such as the distribution right of the collective income, farmers have to participate in decision-making to determine how to form the allocation scheme in a fair and reasonable way by exercising autonomous rights; then, organization fulfills the collective will to meet the needs of its members by exercising special legal person ownership. As for the right to use public infrastructure on the collective land, farmers, as the members, can use it reasonably by its own will, which is the process of exercising membership rights. If farmers’ rights are infringed by other members, they can choose to negotiate with other members in a proper way. If farmers’ rights are infringed when the organization carries out operation activity in the land market, they can obtain compensation from the organization, and the compensation standard is determined by the decision-making.

In China’s rural land system, the collective owns the land, and farmers, as members of the collective, can acquire land contractual management rights through land contracting. With the second round of land contracts nearing expiration, the central government has announced that the term should be extended for 30 years. This paper introduces the theory of psychological ownership to explore the implementation paths of the 30-year extension policy. The study finds that (1) farmers generally exhibit strong psychological ownership towards the contracted land. (2) The Household Contract Responsibility System satisfies the three routes for the formation of psychological ownership—control, intimate knowledge, and self-investment. As the duration of farmers’ possession of contracted land extends, their psychological ownership gradually forms and strengthens. (3) Farmers’ psychological ownership has both positive and negative effects. The 30-year extension policy must adhere to the path dependence formed by the evolution of the land contract system, comply with the institutional constraints imposed by rural land collective ownership, and simultaneously meet the practical demands posed by urban–rural integration and agricultural development. Drawing on the complex effects of farmers’ psychological ownership and considering the historical, institutional, and practical contexts of policy implementation, this study proposes the dual necessity of facilitating and restraining farmers’ psychological ownership when extending for another 30 years and offers corresponding policy suggestions. Facilitation requires empowering farmers with more stable land possession and stronger land rights. Restraint requires preventing the permanent locking of rural land allocation patterns to achieve fair and efficient land allocation.

The requisition–compensation balance of farmland (RCBF) policy proposes that all farmland requisitioned for development must be compensated with new farmland, of which the continued implementation in economically developed counties in China faces great challenges. The extent to which a balance of potential crop production can be achieved merely through farmland consolidation has important theoretical and practical significance. This study proposes measurement procedures to investigate this degree and takes seven counties in southeastern coastal China as examples on which to conduct an empirical study. The results show the following: (1) there is a significant negative correlation between GDP and the index of the balance of potential crop production of each county, that is, the more developed the county, the lower the potential to achieve the balance; (2) with an increase in elevation, the possibility of increasing potential crop production shows an inverted U-shaped curve, with the maximum values occurring at elevations between 50 and 500 m and more attention should be paid to farmland with an elevation of between 50 m and 500 m when implementing farmland consolidation projects; (3) although it is difficult for economically developed counties to strike a balance of potential crop production merely through farmland consolidation, the potential of which to compensate for the loss of potential crop production from requisition is great, reaching more than 40%, which plays an important role in realizing the requisition–compensation balance of potential crop production; and (4) the potential of farmland consolidation to compensate for the loss of potential crop production and the difference of which between counties should be paid adequate attention when implementing RCBF policy adjustment. Therefore, the proposed approach illustrated in this study clearly reveals the relationship between the loss of potential crop production from requisition and the compensation of potential crop production by farmland consolidation, which has important implications for the adjustment of the RCBF policy in China.