Revealing the spatial differences and convergence mechanism of urban land use efficiency (ULUE) under the background of regional integration is of great significance for exploring the coordinated promotion path of ULUE. We attempted to build a theoretical framework to interpret ULUE spatial convergence under the background of regional integration and build a ULUE “green” evaluation system under multi-objective constraints. Based on this, we employed the super efficiency slack-based model (SBM), exploratory spatial data analysis, and spatial convergence model incorporated into the spatial weight matrix to re-examine the true level, spatial differences, and convergence mechanism of ULUE in the Yangtze River Economic Zone from 2003 to 2019 on a city scale. The results show that: (1) during the investigation period, ULUE in the Yangtze River Economic Zone has obvious spatial disequilibrium and spatial correlation characteristics; (2) there are absolute β-space convergence and conditional β-space convergence of ULUE in the whole Yangtze River Economic Zone and its upstream, midstream, and downstream areas; (3) driven by government management, industrial development, and spatial error effects, the convergence time of ULUE in the whole Yangtze River Economic Zone and its upstream, midstream, and downstream areas is obviously shortened.

Promoting cultivated land use efficiency (CLUE) coordinated development in various major function-oriented zones is a measure to deal with unbalanced development of territorial space in China. Taking the optimized development, key development, agricultural production, ecological function, and ecological economic zones of Zhejiang province as research objects, this study incorporated agricultural carbon emission into the measurement framework of CLUE and analyzed the regional disparity and the convergence of CLUE from 2008 to 2017, using slack-based measure model (SBM), the Theil index, and convergence theory. The main results are as follows: (1) The CLUE value that considered agricultural carbon emissions was lower than the CLUE value that did not consider agricultural carbon emissions; thus, agricultural carbon emissions had a negative effect on CLUE. (2) The CLUE value of the five major function-oriented zones showed an increasing trend; after ranking the CLUE value, the CLUE of the optimized development zones was the highest, followed by the ecological function, ecological economic, and key development zones, and that of the agricultural production zones was the lowest, indicating significant regional disparity. (3) The overall disparity of CLUE presented an upward trend, and the within-regional disparity is the main source of the overall disparity. (4) Neither σ convergence nor absolute β convergence occurred in the CLUE of the five major function-oriented zones, but conditional β convergence occurred among the optimized development and ecological economic zones. Although the planning of major function-oriented zones reflects the regional disparity and convergence of CLUE to some extent, the CLUE under the control of major function-oriented zones is not consistent with the function positioning.

This paper theoretically constructs the logical framework of urban agglomeration affecting urban land green use efficiency (ULGUE) and employs the super efficiency SBM model with undesired outputs to measure ULGUE based on the research object from 107 prefecture-level cities and above in the Yangtze River Economic Zone. Then, this paper uses the difference-in-differences method to test the impact of urban agglomeration on the ULGUE. The results show that: (1) urban agglomeration has a positive regulatory effect on the ULGUE, and this research conclusion is robust; (2) the promotion effect of urban agglomeration on the ULGUE has regional differences, showing the basic pattern of ordinary prefecture-level cities > regional central cities > provincial capital cities and medium cities > big cities > super large and megacities; (3) small and medium-sized cities should be encouraged to further agglomerate while moderately controlling the excessive agglomeration of super-large cities and megacities. Moreover, it is suggested to improve the level of regional agglomeration from the aspects of flexible use of market mechanisms and policy tools, innovative technology applications to achieve the effective integration of urban agglomeration, and ULGUE promotion.

Land finance has consumed a lot of China’s urban land resources while contributing to its economic growth. Urban land expansion, land finance, and economic growth have attracted significant scholarly and social attention. However, the influence mechanisms among them have not yet been fully investigated. Based on a conceptual framework analysis, in this study, the panel unit-root test, system-GMM, panel Granger causality test, impulse-response analysis, and variance decomposition were used to analyze the interactional relationships among urban land expansion, land finance, and economic growth for 30 provinces in mainland China during the period of 2000–2017. The findings show that these three factors interact with each other. Land finance exhibits a positive effect on urban land expansion and economic growth. This result is further supported by the Granger causality tests. Moreover, the VAR Granger causality-test results show a unidirectional causality flowing from urban land expansion to economic growth. The impulse-response analysis also reveals that the responses of urban land expansion to shocks in land finance appear to be positive throughout the 10 periods, which is similar to the reaction of economic growth to shocks in land finance. The result of variance decomposition indicates that the explanatory power of urban land expansion for land finance increased from 0.20% to 1.90%. In contrast, the changes in economic growth made the lowest contributions to urban land expansion and land finance. The latter made the highest contribution to economic growth, with average contribution rate of 65.26%. The findings of this study provide valuable policy implications for China, heading for a high-quality development stage.

It is of great significance to explore the dynamic coupling relationship between industrial integration and urban land-use efficiency (ULUE) in order to promote high-quality urban development. This paper presents a system for evaluating industrial integration and ULUE which combines the internal theoretical relationships between the two. Based on this system, this paper analyzes the evolution process and the mechanism behind the coupling coordination relationship between industrial integration and ULUE with the help of the coupling coordination model, nonparametric kernel density estimation, and the geographical detector method. The results indicate the following: (1) The coupling coordination relationship between industrial integration and ULUE in the Yangtze River Economic Zone experienced an overall steady increase during the investigation period. However, there were great spatial differences in the coupling coordination relationship among cities. (2) The lag of the industrial integration level was the key area of resistance to the improvement of the coupling coordination level. (3) The interaction between industrial integration and ULUE in the Yangtze River Economic Zone was very significant. In particular, the impact of industrial agglomeration and factor flow on the ULUE and the impact of land on industrial integration in terms of ecological environment were prominent. In addition, the interaction of different detection factors was mainly manifested as a double factor enhancement effect and nonlinear enhancement effect.