As a proxy for human activity, per capita urban land has great significance for urban planning. We still lack a comprehensive understanding of per capita urban land from the perspective of urban–rural gradients. Thus, based on the concentric buffering method and the dynamic-time-warp clustering method, this research analyzes the urban–rural gradient of the per capita urban land of 345 cities in China in 2000, 2010, and 2016. We find that the per capita urban land in China grew from 110.2 m2/person in 2000 to 118.9 m2/person, increasing by 7.9%.

The quantitative urban system structure in historical periods and the long time-scale urban land area grid dataset with spatial attributes are important for land use and land cover change (LUCC) research. In this study, we aimed to measure the area of county level and above cities in mainland China in the 1930s, also known as the traditional Chinese era (TCE), using a geographic information system (GIS) model and 1:50,000 military topographic maps.

The active participation of stakeholders is a crucial requirement for effective land-use planning (LUP). Involving stakeholders in LUP is a way of redistributing the decision-making power and ensuring social justice in land-management interventions. However, owing to the growing intricacy of sociopolitical and economic relations and the increasing number of competing claims on land, the choice of dynamic land use has become more complex, and the need to find balances between social, economic, and environmental claims and interests has become less urgent.