Integrating the administrative spillover effect into the spatial governance system to revisit land development: A study in urban-rural fringe areas of Wuhan and neighboring cities, China

Spatial governance on land development in the urban-rural fringe has raised increasing widespread concern for curbing urban sprawl and promoting rural revitalization. This study explores the heterogeneities of land development in the administrative ranking system and realizes the justification of the administrative spillover effect on land development at the township level, using urban-rural fringe areas in Wuhan and neighboring cities in China as the case study area. Multi-schemes of spatial adjacencies among the subdistricts and towns have been devised to probe into the differences in their synergies and cooperations in developing land. Land development intensity gauged by the proportion of construction land has shown great spatial heterogeneity between subdistricts and towns, with a high impervious and urbanized land proximate to the urban center. Spatial interaction is more pronounced when two subdistricts are adjacent in the same municipality and is the least powerful when the subdistrict is adjacent to the town, verifying the close horizontal relationships of the local governments, as well as the administrative barriers at the different administrative ranks in the spatial governance system. In addition, local socio-economic development and the locational preferences for political centers and medical facilities have been identified as important influencing factors. The results of the spatial governance system in the current administrative hierarchy have provided valuable insights into the driving mechanism of administrative restructuring, as well as the reshaping and optimization of land use pattern in urban-rural fringe areas in the future.