Relationship between urban construction land expansion and population/economic growth in Liaoning Province, China

The rapid expansion of urban construction land will lead to decoupling from the trend of economic development and population growth. A previous study have shown that there is a long-term bidirectional causal relationship between urban land expansion and economic and population growth. To further explore this relationship, we used remote sensing and statistical data combined with center-of-gravity shift index, coordination degree model, Theil index, and Tapio elastic decoupling index. The main results were as follows: (1) The urban construction land expansion in Liaoning Province has obvious geographical location characteristics, and it can be classified in three types: only along the traffic lines expansion, only along the coastline, along the rivers and traffic lines concurrently. (2) The per capita construction land area (PCCLA) is growing rapidly, and by 2015, 13 cities (all except Benxi) of the province exceeded the national standard for PCCLA (120 m²). Three of these cities (Yingkou, Dalian, and Huludao) exceeded the standard by more than 100%. The uncoordinated areas of land and population urbanization spread from coastal areas to central and western areas and finally to the entire province. (3) The correlation between urban construction land expansion and economic growth has changed from weak positive to strong negative decoupling. After 2010, the decoupling index for all cities became negative. In Huludao, Chaoyang, Panjin, Dalian, Shenyang, and Jinzhou, the construction land expansion was more than 3%, coupled with a 1% decrease in non-agricultural GDP. For other cities, the construction land expansion was less than 3% for a 1% decrease in non-agricultural GDP. These results demonstrate that the rapid growth of construction land was related to a negative economic growth. The findings also suggest that under the current pattern of economic growth, it may be difficult to control the expansion of construction land. New construction land should be reasonably planned and managed, and the dependence of economic growth on construction land and speed of population urbanization is a new challenge that should be reexamined by the local government.