Land use conflicts are intensifying due to the rapid urbanization and accelerated transformation of social and economic development. Accurate identification of land use conflicts is an important prerequisite for resolving land use conflicts and optimizing the spatial pattern of land use. Previous studies on land use conflict using multi-objective evaluation methods mainly focused on the suitability or competitiveness of land use, ignoring land resource scarcity and the diversity of human needs, hence reducing the accuracy of land use conflict identification. This paper proposes a new framework for land use conflict identification. Considering land use multi-suitability, land resource scarcity and the diversity of human needs, the corresponding evaluation index system was constructed, respectively, and the linear weighted sum model was used to calculate the land use conflict index. Taking Jinan as the study area, the spatial distribution characteristics of land use conflicts are accurately identified and analyzed. The results show that: (1) Land use multi-suitability in Shanghe county and Jiyang district is high, but the intensity of land use conflict is not. This indicates that land use multi-suitability is the premise and basis of land use conflict, but it is not the only determinant, which is consistent with our hypothesis. (2) Land use conflicts in Jinan were dominant by medium conflict, accounting for 43.89% of the conflicts, while strong and weak land use conflicts accounted for 25.21% and 30.90% of the conflicts, respectively. The spatial distribution of land use conflicts is obviously different, with high conflicts in the north and low conflicts in the south. Strong land use conflicts are concentrated in the urban and rural transition zones of Tianqiao, Huaiyin and Shizhong districts and in the northern parts of Licheng and Zhangqiu districts. (3) Inefficient land use and land resource waste aggravated regional land use conflicts in Licheng and Zhangqiu districts. (4) The new framework for land use conflict identification proposed in this study can accurately identify land use conflicts, providing a scientific reference and new ideas for accurate identification of land use conflicts.

This study constructed a comprehensive index system and employed a coupling coordination degree model, global spatial autocorrelation models, and local spatial autocorrelation models to quantitatively investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics and dynamic mechanism of the coupling coordination relationship between green urbanization and green finance in China during 2010–2017. The results showed that the level of green urbanization and green finance improved over the study period, but the development of green finance lagged behind the pace of green urbanization and the comprehensive score was still low. The coupling coordination degree presented a trend of continuous optimization, with coordination in eastern China being clearly higher than in central, western, and northeastern China. Furthermore, there was both spatial dependency and spatial heterogeneity in the coupling coordination degree between green urbanization and green finance. Provinces with a high-high clustering mode were mainly distributed in the eastern region, while provinces in western and northeastern China mainly had a low-low clustering mode in 2010. The high-high clustering mode gradually expanded from eastern to central China, while most provinces in western and northeastern China still exhibited low-low clustering in 2017. This indicates that the coupling coordination degree between green urbanization and green finance had strong spatial agglomeration and spatial spillover effects in central and eastern China, while in western and northeastern China its development was still poor.

Accurate identification of land use conflicts is an important prerequisite for the rational allocation of land resources and optimizing the production–living–ecological space pattern. Previous studies used suitability assessment and landscape pattern indices to identify land use conflicts. However, research on land use conflict identification from the perspective of ecological security is insufficient and not conducive to regional ecological, environmental protection, and sustainable development. Based on ecological security, this study takes Shandong Province as an example and comprehensively evaluates the importance of ecosystem service function and environmental sensitivity. It identifies the ecological source, and extracts ecological corridors with a minimum cumulative resistance model from which ecological security patterns are constructed. It identifies land use conflicts through spatial overlay analysis of arable land and construction land. The results show that: (1) Shandong Province has formed an ecological security pattern of “two ecological barriers, two belts, and eight cores” with an area of 15,987 km². (2) The level of arable land–ecological space conflict is low, at 39.76%. The proportions of serious and moderate conflicts are 13.44% and 26.97%, respectively, distributed primarily on the Jiaodong Peninsula and the low hill areas of Ludong. (3) Construction land–ecological space conflict is reasonably stable and controllable, at 76.39%, occurring mainly around urban construction land, with serious and moderate conflict concentrated in the eastern coastal areas, mainly between rural settlements and ecologically safe space in the region. This study has important theoretical and practical reference values for identifying land use conflicts, protecting regional ecological security, and optimizing land use patterns.

Rural decline has become an indisputable fact and a global issue. As a developing country, China is simultaneously facing unprecedented rapid urbanization and severe rural decline. The coordinated development of its rural human–land relationship is therefore of great significance for ensuring the country’s food security and achieving both rural revitalization and sustainable development. Yet, the related research on this complex subject has mostly focused on a single element: rural settlements. Since studies of the rural human–land relationship tend to only discuss the coordinated change in rural populations vis-à-vis rural settlement area, their degree of spatial matching and intensive utilization level of rural settlements has been largely overlooked. To rectify this imbalance, using data on rural populations and rural settlement area in counties of Shandong Province in 2009 and 2018, this paper applied the methods of per capita rural settlement area, the Theil index, and Tapio’s decoupling model to quantitatively identify the rural human–land relationship along three dimensions: intensive utilization level, spatial matching degree, and change coordination degree. The results revealed that the per capita rural settlement area in Shandong Province was as high as 212.18 m²/person in 2018, which exceeded the standard to varying degrees in all cities, having an overall geographical pattern of being high in the north and low in the south. The Theil index for all cities was small, which indicates that the spatial matching between rural population and rural settlements is high. To sum up, there are small differences in the utilization of rural settlements among cities, and their extensive utilization of rural settlements is a common phenomenon. In addition, the relationship between the changes in the rural population size and rural settlement area corresponded to a discordant state, in the form of strong negative decoupling, expansive negative decoupling, and expansive coupling; however, among them, the strong negative decoupling type was the dominant type. It is worth noting that all of these three types will exacerbate the extensive utilization of rural settlements. Accordingly, this paper proposes policies and measures, such as the paid withdrawal of rural homesteads, an expanded scope of homestead transfer, cross-regional “increasing versus decreasing balance”, classified promotion of rural revitalization, and improved village planning.