Transportation is an important driving factor in land use change. Most research focuses on the relationship between land use and transportation systems within a single city. There are few studies of regionally integrated transportation systems and overall land use patterns. Recently, under the background of large-scale construction of high-speed transportation facilities in China’s urban agglomerations, researches of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have revealed the spatial relationship of high-speed transportation construction and land-use efficiency and its mechanism in the Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration. 

The research entitled "Spatial relationship of high-speed transportation construction and land-use efficiency and its mechanism: Case study of Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration", which was published in the Journal of Geographical Sciences, is written by Dr. CUI Xuegang, Prof. FANG Chuanglin, WANG Zhenbo and BAO Chao from the institute of geographic sciences and natural resources research, CAS. 

In this study, researchers have creatively established an evaluation of high-speed transportation superiority degree, which includes the high-speed transportation network, density, and axial radiation, to evaluate the high-speed transportation level and grade of 42 land-based county-level units. They also used a DEA model to calculate the land-use efficiency.  

With the aid of GIS and scatter diagram, this research combined land-use efficiency types with high-speed transportation types to analyze the spatial relationship between them. The results showed that taking the two major cities of Jinan and Qingdao as the hubs, the core surrounding counties present a significant spatial coordination between their land-use efficiency and high-speed transport superiority degree. Finally, researchers thought that high-speed transportation has a positive relationship with land-use efficiency due to the mechanism of element agglomeration and endogenous growth. 

This research was funded by the Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China: "Coupled mechanism and interactive coercing effects between urbanization and eco-environment in mega-urban agglomerations".

The influence of high-speed transportation on resource allocation (Image by FANG Chuanglin's team)

 Reference

Cui Xuegang, Fang Chuanglin, Wang Zhenbo, Bao Chao, 2019. Spatial relationship of high-speed transportation construction and land-use efficiency and its mechanism: Case study of Shandong Peninsula urban agglomeration. Journal of Geographical Sciences 29(4), 549-562, doi: 10.1007/s11442-019-1614-1.