Highlights • Land use changed dramatically in post-reform Beijing from 1992 to 2008. • Cultivated land more than halved while two types of urban built land doubled. • Land price, cultivated land availability and location are significant dynamic factors. • Land reforms affected the spatial–temporal dynamics of land use changes. • Conformity of land price mechanism with reform goals depends on land use types. Abstract China launched an ambitious urban land-use reform to improve land-use efficiency, raise funds for infrastructure construction, and facilitate foreign investment in the late 1980s. Few studies have systematically evaluated the effects of the market mechanisms on land-use changes in Chinese cities. This paper takes the city of Beijing as a case study to quantify the magnitude of land-use changes and model it in relation to spatial and market drivers through time and across the metropolitan region. The analysis uses unique district-level land survey data from 1992, 1996, 2001, 2004 and 2008, as well as land granting records. Analysis reveals that, since the urban land market was established in 1992, the spatial pattern of land uses has changed dramatically in Beijing, land price has exerted a significantly influence on land-use conversion, and the municipal recognition of an open market for land assets has set the spatial–temporal pattern of land uses on a course that sharply differs from past trends in Beijing.

Abstract China’s dual land system has restricted the efficient use of its land, particularly in the rural areas. Recently, rural China has been experiencing rapid change of man-land relationship when depopulation and large amount of abandoned residential land coexist. At present, the researches on rural settlements are mainly focused on micro-scale remediation model, reclamation technology and other fields. At the macro level, the factors, driving forces and classification of rural settlements are mostly concentrated. Most of these studies at the micro level neglected the impact of the residential form on residential area, so that the absolute number of science cannot be compared at the macro level. In this paper, through technical means to eliminate the statistical aperture since 2009 and the impact of housing form, we estimate the redundant part of rural residential land of each province in China and analyze the evolution process and its spatial distribution pattern. The results indicate large amount of redundant residential land and obvious spatial distribution difference among the coastal, central and western parts of China. The ‘increase vs. decrease balance’ policy is highly praised to improve the land use efficiency of the redundant residential land and to coordinate the changing man-land relationship in rural China. However, the governments bear the major role in implementing the policy to deal with the redundant residential land. And, the peasants’ willingness of relocation must be respected and their interests must be protected.

Along with urbanization, population growth, the problem of domestic refuse has become the major problem that we have to face. Through the comparison of the domestic refuse treatment planning between Changchun and Shenzhen, this paper analyses the existing problem in domestic refuse treatment of Changchun and contracts with the newest strategy of domestic refuse, which is putted foreword according to the latest overall objective of urban development in Shenzhen. At this time, this paper proposes optimizative suggestions, which suit local condition, for Changchun domestic refuse treatment planning.