Degree of harmony of urban land use and economic development: Case study of Wuhan metropolitan area

Abstract

As urban land use is facing more and more severe sustainability challenges, it is essential to make effective and scientific evaluation on relationship between urban land use and economic development. With a series of indicators that drawn from previous literatures and data collected from Wuhan Metropolitan Area, this paper evaluated the degree of harmony, which characterizes the level of sustainable in the eight cities. By methods of cluster analysis and grey rational analysis, degree of harmony was categorized and calculated. Results revealed that harmony degree of different cities had certain gaps which were continually widening and can be divided into four categories. Relative scores on harmony of them are almost consistency with the category. It is found that the difference on land use put significant on the degree of harmony. Some other characteristics including city administrative status, comparative regional advantages also have a large impact. These findings lead further suggestions and recommendations for governments to design relevant policy.