Transportation Development, Spatiotemporal Convergence, and Urban Land Use: Study of the Opening of High-Speed Rails in the Yangtze River Delta, China

The rapid development of high-speed rail (HSR) has accelerated urbanization of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). However, the impacts of HSR opening, opening time of HSR, and heterogeneity effects of HSR stations' characteristics on urban land use have not been well studied. Based on the land-use remote sensing data of YRD for 1990–2015, this study analyzes the causal effect of HSR opening on land-use change by applying the difference-in-differences model (DID). We find that the HSR opening has a significantly positive effect on the expansion of urban space and other construction land but accelerates the loss of agricultural land. Furthermore, the impact of HSR on urban land use is cumulative, and the opening time of HSR affects the speed of urban land use change. The longer the HSR opening time, the faster the change in urban land use. Moreover, the issue of the heterogeneity effects of HSR station characteristics on urban spatial expansion is also an important one. The results show that existing stations have a greater impact on urban spatial expansion.