Land-use conflict identification in urban fringe areas using the theory of leading functional space partition

ABSTRACT

Contemporary humanity is confronted with the development dilemma, especially in developing countries, of limited environmental capacity and increased pressure to protect the environment. Based on the concept of the Leading Functional Space Partition, this study identifies land-use conflicts in the urban fringes of ecologically fragile areas in Western China. The purpose is to explore the distribution characteristics of land-use conflicts in urban fringe areas and provide data references to solve a series of ecological and environmental problems inherent in the process of urbanisation. First, relevant software was applied to analyse the current situation of regional land use, and clustering was conducted in line with the goal of “production-living-ecology” to form territorial space zoning with the same function. Then, three leading function evaluation systems were constructed with natural patches of land as the unit to evaluate the current suitability. According to the evaluation results and relevant planning, areas with land-use conflicts were identified, and their spatial characteristics were analysed on this basis. The results demonstrate that the incidence of land-use conflicts in urban fringe areas is high and the spatial distribution presents variability. In the case, the incidence of land-use conflicts in urban fringe areas is very high, with the highest concentration in areas 10–30 km away from urban built-up areas. And the proportion of ecological conflicts in urban fringe areas is the highest.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban fringe
• Identifying land-use conflicts
• Spatial zoning
• Evaluating indicators
• Ecological land

Declarations of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

This study has been supported by the Research Program of Shaanxi Soft Science (2019KRM103) and the State Scholarship Fund of China (201908610060).

Highlights

• Urbanisation has created unique problems in urban fringe areas.

• The distribution characteristics of land-use conflicts in urban fringe areas vary.

• The Leading Functional Space Partition theory can clarify land-use conflicts in Chinese context.

• The incidence of land-use conflicts in Chang’an district of China is very high.

• The proportion of ecological conflicts in Chang’an district of China is the highest.