Free trade zones represent an important system innovation space to realize economic agglomeration advantages with high-level openings. However, its evaluation of land intensive use has not received enough attention. The goal of this paper is to build a land use performance evaluation index system in line with the development trend of industrial economy and the characteristics of mixed land use in the free trade zones. An evaluation index system is constructed based on the three factors of land use status, land use efficiency and pilot free trade zone influence.

Coupled with rapid urbanization and urban expansion, the spatial relationship between transportation development and land use has gained growing interest among researchers and policy makers. In this paper, a complex network model and land use intensity assessment were integrated into a spatial econometric model to explore the spatial spillover effect of the road network on intensive land use patterns in China’s Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration.