Land supply and urbanization strategy in the Yangtze River Delta region, China

China's urbanization rate is increasing beyond sustainable levels because it has increased by approximately 1% every year in the last 30 years. As an important part of urban development, the selection of an urbanization strategy has been the focus of local governments. As such, local governments play an important role in urbanization processes by coordinating land supply and population growth. Using the 2009-2013 panel data of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region, this research tests the relationship between land supply and population growth to explore the urbanization strategy adopted by local governments. Simultaneous equation models for land supply and population growth are developed in this research. Empirical results identify land supply as the cause and population growth as the effect. Findings suggest that local governments in the YRD choose an aggressive strategy in urbanization which treats land as a tool for accelerating the urbanization.