Land Use Policies in Border Cities: Structural Reshaping from Spatial Heterogeneity to Ecological Efficiency

Global urban development is shifting from pursuing scale expansion to focusing on resource efficiency and ecological resilience. Border cities, as strategic nodes of transnational connection, have their micro-practices of land use reflecting macro-level global competition and order restructuring. The experience of China's northeastern border regions provides a highly charged research field: how to balance the inherent contradictions between economic transformation, industrial structure upgrading, and ecological protection in complex cross-border areas?

The research indicates that the heterogeneity of land use in border cities is not randomly distributed but is driven by their specific functional positioning and implemented policies. Traditional single-policy assessments are insufficient to explain this complexity. The 'border location-function differentiation-efficiency coupling' framework constructed in the research attempts to capture the underlying logic behind the formation of this spatial heterogeneity.

Specifically, the research reveals the decisive influence of urban type on land use efficiency. While industrial cities face challenges related to high energy consumption, they are striving to improve efficiency under ecological constraints through technological upgrading via digital transformation; ecological cities, on the other hand, focus on wisdom development guided by protection. The differential response of different urban types to the same land use policy constitutes a key dimension for understanding policy effectiveness.

A deeper structural analysis points to macro-driving factors. The research finds that key inhibiting factors driving the efficiency of green land use include the inherent structural characteristics of energy intensity and industrial structure. This suggests that mere policy intentions are insufficient to overcome the inherent economic and technological inertia in land use activities.

From the perspective of global urban strategy, this suggests that in an era of climate change and resource scarcity, the effectiveness of urban governance no longer depends on uniform 'one-size-fits-all' solutions but must adopt a highly refined, layered governance model adapted to different functional positions. The practice of border cities is shifting from simple resource control to differentiated spatial coupling based on functional positioning, providing regional characteristics strategic insights for the Global South and developing cities on how to build a civilizational ecology in development.

Future research urgently needs to go beyond descriptive policy assessments to deeply excavate the underlying mechanisms of policy and spatial coupling under different urban forms, thereby providing theoretical support for building an urban system that can achieve regional economic vitality while ensuring ecological security in the long term.