Nonlinear Relationships Between Economic Development Stages and Land Use Efficiency in China’s Cities

Land use efficiency (LUE) serves as a crucial nexus between economic development and sustainable resource management, directly influencing urban production–consumption systems. While economic development stages (EDSs) reflect a region’s environmental carrying capacity and profoundly affect LUE, the specific mechanisms governing this relationship remain unclear. In this study, we combined multi-source data to portray the spatiotemporal patterns of EDSs and LUE in 276 Chinese cities from 1995 to 2020, and we identified the nonlinear effects of EDSs on LUE. Based on the fine-scale LUE, it is confirmed that the older the age of urban land generation, the higher the LUE, laying a theoretical foundation for subsequent research. Simultaneously, the EDS continues to be upgraded, with approximately 70% of cities reaching the post-industrialization stage or higher by 2020. The results of partial dependency plots (PDPs) revealed that the EDS has a positive impact on LUE. From the perspective of different urban scales, the higher the EDSs of supercities, type I large cities, type II large cities, and type II small cities, the greater the positive impact on LUE, whereas the impact patterns at other urban scales follow an inverted U-shape. These findings carry important implications for sustainable spatial development, particularly in optimizing land resource allocation to assist the shift to more efficient production systems and responsible consumption patterns.