Do development zones increase urban land use intensity? Empirical analysis from 235 cities in China

The development zone has been considered the engine of China's urban development in recent decades. However, the prosperity of development zones has also brought many land use problems. Given the lack of highresolution time-series land-use data, the impact of development zone construction on urban land use has not been adequately addressed within the existing literature. Employing new annual high-resolution satellite data, this article for the first time quantifies the impact of development zones on the expansion of urban areas and on changes in land-use intensity across China, identifying spatial and temporal differences in their impact using Propensity Score Matching with a Difference-in-Difference (PSM-DID) model. Using panel data for 235 Chinese cities from 1990 to 2015, we found that establishing development zones increased the expansion of urban areas and reduced the urban land-use intensity in the short term (usually 2 years). From spatial perspectives, the impact of development zones on land use displayed spatial heterogeneity. Finally, we put forward policy suggestions to improve the land use intensity of development zones in the context of sustainable development.