A Model to Analyze Industrial Clusters to Measure Land Use Efficiency in China

An understanding of how land use efficiency and industrial clusters interact helps one to make informed decisions that balance economic benefits with sustainable urban development. The emergence of industrial clusters is a result of market behavior, while the determination of administrative boundaries is a result of government behavior. When these two are not consistent, it can lead to distortions in the allocation of land resources. However, current research on industrial development and land use efficiency is based on agglomeration within administrative regions rather than on industrial clusters. This study addresses this gap by identifying industrial clusters based on the spatial distribution of enterprises and analyzing their impact on land use efficiency. This study uses the density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) algorithm to identify industrial clusters, the convex hull algorithm to study their morphology, and spatial econometrics to measure the relationship between land use efficiency and the scale of industrial clusters. The results indicate the following: (1) the density of manufacturing industry (MI) clusters is significantly higher than that of information technology industry (ITI) clusters, and larger industrial clusters tend to be more circular in shape; (2) there is a positive correlation between the scale of industrial clusters and land use efficiency, and industrial clusters with varying levels of land use efficiency are interspersed throughout; (3) significant differences exist between the boundaries of industrial clusters and administrative regions, which could lead to biases when analyzing land use efficiency based on administrative regions. This study provides theoretical support for government policies on improving land use efficiency in China.