Urban land intensive use meets the requirements for the sustainable development of urban land and is an important part of urban sustainable development. The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) spans the three major regions of China, which are the most active areas of China’s economy. The contradiction between humans and land is becoming more acute. There are also regional differences in land use patterns affecting the coordinated development of the YREB and the construction of an ecological civilization. Therefore, the scientific evaluation of urban land intensive use is a key area in the current research field of urban sustainable development. In this study, the YREB is chosen as the research object, and urban land intensive use is studied using nighttime light data and statistical data on the urban built-up area. An evaluation model based on urban nighttime light intensity and land urbanization is constructed with an allometric growth model. Considering that the impact of land urbanization on urban nighttime light has a possible lag effect, an evaluation model of land intensive use that considers the lag effect between urban nighttime light and the land urbanization level is proposed. Using urban agglomerations and some typical cities in the study area as research samples, the characteristics of urban nighttime light and land urbanization are analyzed to reveal the spatial and temporal characteristics of land development in the YREB. The results show that nighttime light remote-sensing data can better reflect the level of urban land use, the allometric growth model can better fit the intensity of urban light and the land urbanization level, and the allometric growth characteristics can reflect the land use characteristics of different cities and urban agglomerations. In regional experiments with typical cities and with urban agglomerations, compared to the original allometric growth model, the goodness of fit of the allometric growth model with the lag effect improves, on average, by 3.2% and 2%, respectively, with the highest increases being by 9.9% and 4.9%, respectively. The level of intensive land use in the YREB gradually decreases from east to west, and there are great differences among different cities in the provinces and urban agglomerations. The lower reaches of the Yangtze River have high land intensive use on the whole. In the middle reaches, multicenter cities have a greater efficiency of land use than the surrounding cities. In the upper reaches, only Chengdu and Chongqing have clear advantages in urban land intensive use. The results of this study can be helpful in providing an important reference for the sustainable development of land in the YREB and can provide a basis for future urban land optimization and sustainable development. Realizing the coordination and linkage between key cities and major cities is the key to enhancing the overall sustainable development ability of the core cities in the YREB.

The development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is an important national regional development strategy and a strategic engineering development system. In this study, the evolution of urban spatial patterns in the YREB from 1990 to 2010 was mapped using the nighttime stable light (NSL) data, multi-temporal urban land products, and multiple sources of geographic data by using the rank-size distribution and the Gini coefficient method. Through statistical results, we found that urban land takes on the feature of “high in the east and low in the west”. The study area included cities of different development stages and sizes. The nighttime light increased in most cities from 1992 to 2010, and the rate assumed an obvious growth tendency in the three urban agglomerations in the YREB. The results revealed that the urban size distribution of the YREB is relatively dispersed, the speed of urban development is unequal, and the trend of urban size structure shows a decentralized distribution pattern that has continuously strengthened from 1990 to 2010. Affected by factors such as geographical conditions, spatial distance, and development stage, the lower reaches of the Yangtze River have developed rapidly, the upper and middle reaches have developed large cities, and a contiguous development trend is not obvious. The evolution of urban agglomerations in the region presents a variety of spatial development characteristics. Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai have entered a phase of urban continuation, forming a more mature interregional urban agglomeration, while the YREB inland urban agglomerations are in suburbanization and multi-centered urban areas. At this stage, the conditions for the formation of transregional urban agglomerations do not yet exist, and there are many uncertainties in the boundary and spatial structure of each urban agglomeration.