Urban land use/land cover (LULC) monitoring and prediction are vital for understanding the spatiotemporal change dynamics of future land uses. They provide the necessary data for effectively planning and managing natural land resources. In this study, we analyzed and simulated the changes in urban LULC within Zhejiang Province, a region in China experiencing rapid urbanization. By exploring the historical change dynamics of the region, we observed substantial transformations in the extent of built-up areas, forests, and agricultural land from 1995 to 2020. Specifically, the study area witnessed the expansion in urban built-up areas by approximately 6126.93 km², while forests and agricultural land witnessed decreases of 3252.47 km² and 2885.13 km², respectively. To predict the study area’s future LULC, a cellular automata (CA) model was utilized in combination with an advanced patch-generating land use simulation (PLUS) model. This integrated approach allowed for multiple land use predictions based on different scenarios. Under the baseline scenario (BLS), it was projected that the area of urban expansion in Zhejiang Province would be approximately 4501.62 km². However, under the scenario of cultivated land and ecological protection, i.e., CLPS and EPS, urban growth was observed to be 538.64 km² and 1776.16 km², respectively. These findings indicate that the extent of built-up area development in Zhejiang Province is significantly reduced when the CLPS and EPS are implemented in comparison to the BLS. Therefore, policy interventions are crucial to protect agricultural land and conserve ecological areas. This research provides the scientific data needed for proper planning and serves as reference data for other regions with similar rapid urbanization.

Planning policies have greatly influenced the development of urban villages, an informal phenomenon in which rural settlements are encircled by urban environments during China’s rapid urbanization process. “The National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014–2020)” of China initiated in 2014 provides a new perspective on planning policy research on China’ urban villages. Hangzhou, a pioneer city that adopts new-type urbanization in China and combines the characteristics of rapid urban growth, mountainous urban terrains, and a long cultural history, serves as a typical case study to compare the planning policies responding to the informality of urban villages guided by traditional and new-type urbanization. This study employed the content analysis method to analyze the evolution of Hangzhou’s planning policies of urban villages since the reform and opening up and used one-way ANOVA to analyze the differences in rental levels among the urban villages developed under the planning policies of different urbanization stages, aiming to compare the influences of planning policies guided by traditional and new-type urbanization on urban village development. The results indicate that the policies allowing some degree of informality in the new-type urbanization stage achieve a higher rental level for urban villages than the policies of the traditional urbanization stages that restrict and prevent informality. The findings of this research suggest that informality may provide advantages that formality cannot replace and provides important policy implications for rapidly urbanizing countries.

The 21st century expansion of built-up areas due to rapid urbanization has recently been at the forefront of global land use/land cover research. Knowledge of the changing dynamics of urban land use is crucial for the monitoring of urbanization and the promotion of sustainable urban development. In this paper, Zhejiang Province was selected as the study area. It is a region with rapid urban growth located along the southeastern coast of China, with a highly developed economy but with a shortage of land resources. We employed remotely sensed and socio-economic panel data for the period between 1990 and 2020 to monitor urban land use changes and utilized the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to examine the urbanization process and the various driving factors of rapid urban expansion in Zhejiang Province, China, from 1990 to 2020. The study’s results revealed substantial urban growth of about 6899.59 km², i.e., 6.6%, whereas agricultural land decreased by 4320.68 km², i.e., 4.19%. The rapid urban development was primarily attributed to the transformation of farmlands, forestlands, and water bodies into built-up areas by nearly 86.9%, 6.94%, and 6.06%, respectively. The built-up areas revealed features of spatial clustering. The study showed that the expansion hotspots were mainly distributed within the urban fabric of cities such as Hangzhou, Ningbo, Jinhua–Yiwu, and Wenzhou–Taizhou. The results further revealed the substantial influence of urban growth on the local areas of the province. As the core explanatory variables, population and economic development significantly promoted local urban expansion. The study’s findings indicated a positive spatial spillover effect as regards the influence of economic development on the study area’s urban growth, whereas the spatial spillover effect of the population was negative. Therefore, economic development was a major driving factor contributing immensely to the expansion of urban areas in Zhejiang Province, especially in the 26 mountainous counties of the province. The study enriches our understanding of the transformation of LULC and the changing dynamics of urban areas in China and provides the necessary research data that are vital for urban land-use planners and decision-makers to overcome the negative consequences of the expansion of urban areas due to the continuous economic growth of China.

The rapid growth of University Science and Technology Innovation Parks (USTIPs) have recently been vital to China’s innovation-driven development. However, contributions to regional economic growth remains understudied. The Yangtze River Delta (YRD), given its economic foundation, concentration of higher institutions, and innovation policy emphasis, provides an ideal context for such study. This paper examines the relationship between USTIPs and regional economic development in the YRD. A multivariate regression analysis across 41 cities revealed that a 1% increase in USTIP quantity corresponds to a 0.122% rise in GDP, a 0.096% increase in high-tech industrial output, and a 0.087% improvement in land use efficiency. These effects are weaker than those of other Science and Technology Innovation Parks (STIPs), which contribute a 0.595% GDP increase, 0.106% growth in high-tech output, and 0.289% improvement in land use efficiency. A comparative analysis further showed that 12 USTIPs employ 21,325 staff with a registered capital of USD 2.12 billion, substantially lower than 123 STIPs that employed 226,055 staff with USD 24.09 billion capital. Despite these limitations, USTIPs are established as long-term drivers of innovation ecosystems and regional competitiveness. These findings serve as empirical evidence linking USTIPs to economic growth, providing valuable insights for optimizing regional innovation policies.