Local Practices on Transfer of Development Rights in China: Background, Mode, Challenge and Breakthrough

In the past decade, the transfer of development rights (referred to TDR hereafter) has been emerged and developed to a large scale amid China’s fast urbanization. Different from the practices in countries with private land ownership like the United States, the practices of TDR in China are still dominated by local governments, which are trying hard to obtain extra construction land-use quota under China’s current centralized land management system since the late 1990s. In this process, the land-use efficiency may be improved at the prices of social equity and harmony.