Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555

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Landscape and Urban Planning

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan

Research Paper

Using agent-based modeling to assess multiple strategy options and

trade-offs for the sustainable urbanization of cultural landscapes: A case in
Nansha, China
Jingyi Liu a, Menghan Zhang b, Yu Xia a, Huisen Zheng a, Chongxian Chen a, *
a
College of Forestry and Landscape Architecture, South China Agricultural University, No. 483 Wushan Road, Tianhe District, Guangzhou 510642, China
b
School of Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University, No. 35 Qinghua East Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Many cultural landscapes are undergoing inevitable urbanization. For these landscapes to attain sustainability,
Sustainability participatory planning processes are often required. However, different stakeholders may prefer different stra­
Urbanization strategies tegies and goals, making decision-making extremely difficult. This paper explores how three urbanization
Trade-offs
strategy options (based on lay stakeholders’ willingness, historical landscape pattern, and land-use planning) and
Stakeholder participation
Agent-Based Modeling
their possible trade-offs can affect cultural landscapes’ sustainability. Specifically, it examines 1) how these
Temporal patterns strategies’ varying adoption levels affect different landscape functions, and 2) how their different trade-offs
affect sustainability perceived by different stakeholders. We conducted a case study in the Nansha District of
Guangzhou, China. Based on interviews with lay and expert stakeholders, we developed an agent-based model to
experiment with a range of scenarios reflecting different trade-offs of the three strategies. With 11 indicators and
their stakeholder-weighted aggregation assessed in every simulation step, we analyzed the strategies’ effects and
compared five typical scenarios’ sustainability on two timescales. The results showed that the scenario priori­
tizing lay stakeholders’ willingness outperformed other scenarios in the sustainability assessment. Following
historical patterns performed well in the ecological aspect and in the near term, but it may fall short in intensive
urbanization from non-experts’ perspectives. Land-use planning was plausible as a static destination but inef­
fective during the entire process. The findings suggest that sustainable rural development should prioritize local
adaptations; landscape pattern preservation and land-use planning must consider place-specific processes based
on stakeholder participation. They also suggest the usability of agent-based modeling and time-series analysis in
cultural landscape and sustainability research.

1. Introduction demographic and economic changes. However, rapid urbanization may

Cultural landscapes, i.e., landscapes that have evolved from a long
history of human-nature interaction, are appreciated for their high
ecological, cultural, and aesthetic values (Agnoletti, 2014; Schulp et al.,
2019). While the term “cultural landscape” is most commonly associated
with rural and agricultural contexts, it also applies to the entire land­
scape mosaic with different degrees of human modification (Wu, 2010).
Many cultural landscapes, despite their agricultural origins, are under­
going profound transformations due to rapid land-use change, especially
urbanization (Plieninger et al., 2014; Yu et al., 2016). In the current
context, urbanization of cultural landscapes is often inevitable due to
irreversibly disrupt the structure, function, feedback, and identities of
the original cultural landscapes (Rescia et al., 2010; Selman, 2012),
which in turn affects the well-being of local populations (Hasan et al.,
2020). In this reality, rather than aiming for conservation or restoration
of their previous states, sustainable urbanization has become a critical
goal for these inevitably changing cultural landscapes (Fischer et al.,
2012; Plieninger et al., 2014).
1.1. Sustainable urbanization of cultural landscapes
The concept of “sustainable development” or “sustainability,”

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: liujingyi@scau.edu.cn (J. Liu), zmh1993@bjfu.edu.cn (M. Zhang), xiayuscau@scau.edu.cn (Y. Xia), 339278543@qq.com (H. Zheng),
chongxian@scau.edu.cn (C. Chen).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104555
Received 20 October 2021; Received in revised form 24 August 2022; Accepted 29 August 2022
Available online 5 September 2022
0169-2046/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
J. Liu et al.
commonly defined as “development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs’’ (WCED, 1987), emphasizes a reconciliation of human
development and environmental protection in the long-term (NRC,
1999). Three pillars or dimensions—environment, economy, and soci­
ety—are frequently used as a conceptual framework for assessing and
promoting sustainability (Wu, 2013). However, the relationship be­
tween environmental capital and socio-economic capital has been at the
core of discussions regarding “weak sustainability” versus “strong sus­
tainability” (Huang et al., 2015; Wu, 2013; Xie et al., 2020). Weak
sustainability permits mutual substitutability between natural and
human-made capitals as long as the total capital increases or remains the
same. By contrast, strong sustainability assumes that the substitutability
of manufactured for natural capital is seriously limited by environ­
mental capital, which makes a unique contribution to welfare (Daly
et al., 2007; Ekins et al., 2003). Meanwhile, as the concept of ‘‘ecosystem
services’’ (ESs), which aims to identify and evaluate the benefits people
obtain from ecosystems (MEA, 2005), has been a bridge between envi­
ronment and society (Braat & de Groot, 2012), the ESs framework has
also been widely used for understanding and assessing natural and
human-made capitals and sustainability (Wiens, 2013). More recently,
the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have envi­
sioned a global agenda for sustainability (United Nations, 2015).
While sustainability is relevant to various spatial scales, its research
and application would be more operational at a landscape or regional
scale (Wu, 2013). At this scale, SDGs are difficult to fully implement and
should be localized (Szetey et al., 2021). To attain sustainability of
specific landscapes, scholars have suggested focusing on ESs in area-
specific contexts (also known as “landscape services”) that integrate
nature and culture, consider spatial patterns, and involve stakeholder
values (Termorshuizen & Opdam, 2009; Vallés-Planells et al., 2014).
From this perspective, Wu (2013) reviewed the development of the
concept of “landscape sustainability” and defined it as “the capacity of a
landscape to consistently provide long-term landscape-specific ESs for
maintaining and improving human well-being in a regional context and
despite environmental and sociocultural changes.” In this sense, the
sustainability of a landscape would be the sustainability of the human-
valued ESs provision by that landscape. For cultural landscapes to
achieve sustainable urbanization, the landscape should maintain the
overall ESs provided by the original landscape despite land-use changes
during the rural–urban transition. From a strong sustainability stand­
point, while environmental services might inevitably become compro­
mised for economic and social services in the urbanization of rural and
natural areas, sustainable urbanization should not unduly limit the
ecological capacity of the entire landscape.
1.2. Participatory planning process
While landscape-specific ESs provide a framework for comprehend­
ing landscape sustainability, decision-making and planning remain
challenging. Complexity and uncertainty are prevalent in cultural
landscapes as coupled human-natural systems (Moallemi et al., 2020).
The feasibility of planning is influenced by complex factors such as in­
dividuals’ decisions, societal demands, policy and institutional settings,
and environmental capacities (Van Berkel & Verburg, 2012). As a result,
sustainable planning for cultural landscapes often entails the partici­
pation of crucial stakeholders, i.e., the individuals or groups affecting or
affected by an issue (Hassenforder et al., 2016). Participatory planning
processes enable the co-creation of knowledge by different stakeholders,
which can increase the chances of more sensible decisions and successful
outcomes (Moallemi et al., 2020; Rovai et al., 2016; Tieskens et al.,
2017; Van Berkel & Verburg, 2012).
However, trade-offs are ubiquitous in participatory planning (Dolley
et al., 2020), which exist in the divergent objectives as well as the as­
sumptions about pathways or strategies (Singh et al., 2015), notably
between lay and expert stakeholders (Scott, 2011; Tempesta &
2
Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555
Vecchiato, 2015; Yang et al., 2021). Lay stakeholders’ (e.g., non-expert
rural and urban residents) voluntary decisions are internal drivers of
land-use changes, which depend on individuals’ ability and willingness
to engage in optional land-use activities in various ways (Valbuena et al.,
2010). Integrating or prioritizing their perspectives in planning (known
as “bottom-up planning”) increases sensitivity to place-specific social
and environmental conditions (Rovai et al., 2016; Szetey et al., 2021;
Van Berkel & Verburg, 2012). However, bottom-up planning may be
limited by lay stakeholders’ immediate demands while neglecting
external influences on landscape change (Butler et al., 2015), rendering
landscape-scale sustainability uncertain (Liu et al., 2021). Expert
stakeholders (e.g., scholars, planners, and policymakers) typically focus
on goals and strategies at larger scales. Many scholars appreciate his­
torical landscape patterns because they embody essential knowledge
about sustainable management (Antrop, 2005; Di Fazio & Modica,
2018) and inspire new planning concepts (Kučera et al., 2015; Tang
et al., 2019). Planners and policymakers usually rely on executive-
ordered land-use planning for the optimized spatial arrangement of
human development and environmental conservation (Cao et al., 2021;
Gong et al., 2018). However, because historical patterns may lose their
relationship to contemporary drivers of transformation (Selman, 2012),
their sustainability in rapidly changing contexts is not guaranteed.
Expert-led and command-and-control planning tends to neglect local
adaptive activities, thus jeopardizing the multifunctional services they
provide (Agnoletti, 2014; Rovai et al., 2016).
1.3. Agent-based modeling (ABM) approach
To facilitate decision-making under uncertainty, previous research
has complemented participatory planning with exploratory modeling
(Moallemi & Malekpour, 2018; Van Berkel & Verburg, 2012). Besides a
participatory backcasting process where goals and possible strategies
are envisioned, future outcomes of the optional strategies are explored
by model simulations; decisions can be made by identifying the strate­
gies that reach closer to the goals (Verburg et al., 2016). So far, myriad
different modeling approaches have been employed to simulate and
assess planning strategy options and trade-offs. However, many of these
approaches would considerably reduce the complexity of the in­
teractions and feedbacks in social–ecological systems and fail to reflect
the paths to predefined scenarios in the model structure (Brown et al.,
2013; Verburg et al., 2016). ABM is a tool that represents a large number
of local decision-making units and their interactions and feedbacks with
their environments and socio-political settings in spatial–temporal
contexts (Valbuena et al., 2010). Some cultural landscape studies have
applied the ABM approach to simulate alternative scenarios (involving
rural agents’ decisions in response to the environment under different
policy settings) and evaluate their outcomes using indicators that reflect
specific targets (Tieskens et al., 2017; Valbuena et al., 2010; Van Berkel
& Verburg, 2012).
Compared with rural landscapes, rural–urban fringe and rapidly
urbanizing contexts pose additional challenges to sustainability
decision-making (Dolley et al., 2020). Due to the diversity of stakeholder
types and administrative arrangements, more strategy options and goals
may arise in these contexts (Marshall et al., 2018). Rather than being
mutually exclusive, multiple strategy options may coexist with varying
adoption levels and trade-offs, creating a multidimensional choice space
(Moallemi et al., 2020); diverse sustainability goals may be valued
differently among stakeholders (Hölting et al., 2020). As a result, rather
than just finding optimal strategies based on explicit criteria, decision-
making and planning may benefit from more specific and comprehen­
sive information about, for example, the effects of each strategy’s
different adoption levels and of multiple strategies’ various trade-offs.
Achieving this requires systematically experimenting with an array of
scenarios in the multidimensional choice space (Moallemi et al., 2020).
Assessment of the scenarios’ sustainability needs to consider diverse
landscape-specific ES indicators, as well as their aggregation or
J. Liu et al.
landscape multifunctionality, based on different stakeholders’ demands
(Hölting et al., 2020). Moreover, temporal patterns of ESs should be
highlighted (Rouleau & Zupko, 2019; Stürck & Verburg, 2017), for
sustainability should be assessed by the change process rather than by
any time point (Haines-Young, 2000).
This paper aims to address the challenge of cultural landscapes’
sustainable urbanization when various strategy options and goals exist.
With a case study conducted in Nansha, China, we explored how three
urbanization strategy options (based on lay stakeholders’ willingness,
historical landscape pattern, and land-use planning) and their various
trade-offs can affect a cultural landscape’s sustainability as perceived by
different stakeholders (villagers, urban residents, and experts). We
specifically addressed two research questions: (1) How will varying
adoption levels of the three strategies affect multiple landscape-specific
ESs? (2) How will different trade-offs between these strategies affect
landscape sustainability from different stakeholders’ perspectives?
Following this introduction, Section 2 outlines the context of the
study area. Section 3 details the research methods: an agent-based
model was developed based on stakeholder interviews; a range of sce­
narios was parameterized to reflect different strategy options’ adoption
levels and trade-offs; eleven indicators and a multifunctionality indica­
tor were used to evaluate the impacts of the strategies on landscape
sustainability over different timescales. Section 4 presents the results of
the study. Finally, Section 5 discusses the implications of the results for
sustainable policymaking and planning practice.
2. Study area
The study was conducted in the Nansha District (784 km2), which is
located in the south of Guangzhou City in Guangdong Province, China,
and borders the Pearl River estuary (Fig. 1). Nansha is an example of a
Fig. 1. Study area, including satellite imagery showing the polder landscape structure.
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Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555
traditional cultural landscape facing drastic urbanization. During the
past millennium, people progressively migrated to this estuary area and
reclaimed the deposited sand flats (Panyu Chorography Editorial Board,
1995, p. 268). Much like the famous Dutch polder landscapes, the
landscape structure of Nansha (among other river delta regions in
southeast China) is also characterized by polders, or diwei (enclosed
dikes around farmland or ponds), with canals in between and linear
settlements along the elevated banks (Nijhuis et al., 2021). While most
polder landscapes in the Pearl River Delta have vanished due to massive
urbanization in the last 40 years, Nansha retains this structure and
benefits from its functions, such as food production, water delivery, and
flood control, which also represents the cultural identity of this
landscape.
However, Nansha has been undergoing rapid and extensive urbani­
zation as a result of government policies (Cheng et al., 2017). With the
development of the Nansha New District elevated to the national stra­
tegic level in the “12th Five-year Plan,” the Urban Master Planning of
Nansha New District (2012–2025) was proposed in 2012. According to
this ambitious plan, Nansha would become a platform for Guang­
dong–Hong Kong–Macao cooperation, an economic growth node in
southern China, and a regional ecological, transportation, and service
center. From 2012 to 2025, the population was projected to increase
from 620,000 to 2.3 million, with the urbanization degree increasing
from 65 % to 95 %.
This rapid urbanization, being an imperative, also faces significant
challenges. Although Nansha’s development “has proceeded at a speed
and scale never before seen in the history of the world” (Li, 2020, p.
109), the intended speed would still be difficult to accomplish based on
current trends. According to the Guangzhou Statistical Bureau, Nansha’s
population and urbanization degree were only 846,600 and 73.28 % by
2020, with annual growth rates of 5.244 % and 0.19 %, respectively, in
J. Liu et al.
the previous 5 years. Due to the vast gap between the current situation
and the planning goal, reaching the targeted population and urbaniza­
tion degree will primarily depend on the influx of migrants (Yang et al.,
2019). However, most people consider Nansha a rural eco-tourism
destination (Liu et al., 2019), and only a few people choose to move
there (Yang et al., 2019). Consequently, the latest “14th Five-year Plan”
for the Nansha District released in May 2021 had to reduce the popu­
lation target for 2025 to 1.2 million, postponing the previously projected
2.3 million as a long-term goal.
Nansha’s current planning, based on zoning principles, promotes
intensive land use in both urban and rural areas. While the master plan
preserves natural land patches and the river-canal system, many low-
lying farmlands and ponds were occupied by the urban development
zones, and the traditional linear settlement structure was ignored. This
urbanization approach has jeopardized many ESs that the traditional
landscape provided, leading to ecological land degradation (Zhang
et al., 2020), increased flood risk (Chen et al., 2020), land subsidence
(Ma et al., 2019), and a loss of aesthetic and tourism values (Xu et al.,
2021). Moreover, implementing this top-down planning relies on
expropriating farmland and village assets while compensating affected
villagers. In the last decade, a majority of villages in Nansha have had
virtually all of their agricultural land expropriated (Yuan, 2017, p. 14);
most inhabitants of such villages are rural residents only in legal terms
and have depended primarily on industry and commerce for a living
rather than farming (Zhou & Zhou, 2015). Some of these villages are in
the process of transitioning to cities, while the current planning en­
courages relocating urbanized villagers to nearby towns, which may
uproot village communities, affect former villagers’ income sources, and
harm local cultural diversity, social relations, and sense of place (Wong
et al., 2021).
3. Methods
To address the uncertainty of the future, we employed a “research
through design” process (Liu et al., 2021; Maher et al., 2018; Stremke &
Schöbel, 2019), which draws on design—envisioning landscape changes
for sustainably providing ESs while meeting societal needs and
respecting societal values (Nassauer & Opdam, 2008)—to conduct sus­
tainability experiments (Wu, 2013). This research included three pha­
ses: stakeholder interviews, scenario design, and sustainability
assessment (Fig. 2). An ABM approach was applied to simulate and
assess the urbanization scenarios over time. Stakeholders’ perspectives
and demands obtained through interviews were incorporated into all
stages in various forms.
Fig. 2. Diagram of the method integrating the ABM approach into a “research through design” process.
4
Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555
3.1. Stakeholder interviews
Stakeholders in this study involved both lay stakeholders (i.e., local
villagers, local urban residents, and potential urban residents) and
expert stakeholders (i.e., scholars, planners, and government officials).
To collect data on their perspectives and knowledge, a total of 137
questionnaire-based interviews were conducted with 127 lay stake­
holders (63 villagers and 64 urban residents) and 10 experts in February
and March 2022. Before the main fieldwork, pretest interviews were
conducted to help refine the questionnaire and interview process by
gathering information and response options (allowing interviewees to
add options) and identifying possible misunderstandings (Buschle et al.,
2021).
Table 1 outlines the questionnaire structure, including three parts
(questionnaire details in Supplementary file - Appendix A). Part I
collected lay stakeholders’ basic information and behavior options and
preferences in urbanization. Part II gathered their perceptions of suit­
able urban development locations. The results of the two parts were used
to parameterize an agent-based model. Part III focused on the demands
and objectives of both lay and expert stakeholders in future urbaniza­
tion, which helped select indicators and assign weights in sustainability
assessment.
The lay stakeholders were interviewed face to face in different vil­
lages and towns across Nansha’s township areas (excluding Longxue, a
newly reclaimed port area with no villages or urban residence). The 63
villagers were selected through a stratified sampling method. As the
pretests revealed that villagers’ answers could be influenced by their
proximity to existing urbanized areas, the total rural population was
divided into three groups based on their villages’ distances to the nearest
urbanized areas: adjoining (<0.5 km), near (0.5–2 km), and far (2–5
km). In each of the eight township areas, we chose one spot for each
group (adding up to 21 spots). In each chosen spot, we interviewed three
randomly encountered persons whom we confirmed to be native vil­
lagers. Among the 64 urban residents interviewed, 32 were locals, with
four encountered at random in each town and confirmed to be local
urban residents; the other 32 were randomly chosen on the streets of
downtown Guangzhou and confirmed to be interested in moving to
Nansha (interviewee selection details in Supplementary file - Appendix
A). To promote mutual understanding in the interviews with lay stake­
holders, we asked questions orally in plain language, providing relevant
background information (e.g., urbanization and compensation policy)
and explanations (e.g., meanings of factors and services); interviewees
were encouraged to elaborate on their answers.
Furthermore, based on public information online, we identified 15
expert stakeholders (five each of scholars, professional planners, and
government officials) who have been involved in the research, planning,
J. Liu et al. Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555

Table 1 urbanization, suitability analyses for urbanization were conducted

Brief structure of the questionnaire.
Interviewees Questions
Part I
Villagers Confirming identity as
native villager
Whether they own
agricultural lands
(Informing them of
urbanization and
compensation policy)
Whether and how soon they
wish to become urban
residents
(If willing to urbanize, then)
Whether they prefer to
resettle in place or relocate
Urban residents Confirming identity as local
or potential urban residents
Whether they prefer to live
with resettled villagers
Part II
Villagers and urban How and how much
residents different factors influence
their location choice
Part III
Villagers, urban How much they demand
residents, and different services from the
experts landscape
Options
- None or few
- More than 1 mu (0.067
ha)
- Yes, within 1 year
- Yes, within a decade
- No
- Resettle in current
location
- Relocate to a nearby town
- Depends on future
condition
- Local urban resident
- Not local but interested in
moving to Nansha
- Mixed residence with
resettled villagers
- Residence with only
urban residents
- 12 factors chosen/
provided in pretests
- Qualitative judgments for
“far/near,” “high/low,” or
“steep/flat”
- Rating importance on 1–5
Likert scales
- - 11 services chosen/
provided in pretests
- Rating importance on 1–5
Likert scales
based on villagers’ and urban residents’ spatial preferences. For the
impacting factors identified by each of the two stakeholder types, 10
scores from 10 to 100 were assigned spatially by reclassifying the cor­
responding factor maps to reflect the stakeholders’ qualitative judg­
ments obtained through interviews. We used the Analytic Hierarchy
Process (AHP) to assign weights for the factors (Saaty, 1990). Although
several more objective methods exist for determining weights, including
regression analysis, principal component analysis, data envelopment
analysis, and projection pursuit (Krajnc & Glavič, 2005; Lu et al., 2021),
we used the AHP because it combines quantification with qualitative
aspects of problems (stakeholders’ subjective perceptions), which play
an important role in ABM. During the AHP, different stakeholders’
opinions can be systematically extracted by assessing the relative
importance of factors in a pairwise comparison matrix with 1–9 scales,
and numerical weights were generated by matrix operation. Meanwhile,
in cases where conflicting factors may be valued similarly, the AHP can
help reflect the underlying trade-offs between these factors (Nardo et al.,
2005) by comparing them within a limited range while being enough
sensitive to make a distinction (Krajnc & Glavič, 2005). For each
stakeholder type, the perceived urbanization suitability (S) was then
calculated by the weighted overlay of scored factor maps:
∑n
S= (wi × si )
i=1
where n is the number of factors influencing urbanization suitability, wi
is the weight of factor i, and si is the score of factor i.
The AHP was conducted after the interviews by the authors using the
average Likert scale scores rather than by the interviewers directly
because pairwise comparisons of multiple factors are time-consuming
and possibly inconsistent. Furthermore, since the impacts of land-use
change may affect future land-use changes as a result of feedback
mechanisms (Verburg, 2006), the model iterated the suitability calcu­
lation at every time step to reflect this.

3.2.2. Autonomous agent behaviors

or management of Nansha. We interviewed them via email or phone and
received responses from five scholars, four planners, and one govern­
ment official (anonymous list of respondents in Supplementary file -
Appendix A).
3.2. Agent-based modeling
Based on the interviews, we developed an agent-based model to
explore the impacts of alternative urbanization strategies and scenarios
reflecting their trade-offs. The modeling software used was NetLogo.
The study area (784 km2) was modeled at 100-m resolution. Due to the
large population (846,600 in 2020) and the high proportion of unreg­
istered residents in the population (42 %), we were unable to obtain the
exact spatial distribution of all individuals in the whole district. As a
simplification, we assumed that the urban population (620,388) is
evenly distributed across the urban plots, as is the rural population
(226,212) across the village plots. Since rural land in China is collec­
tively owned, land-use decisions are typically made by village commu­
nities or collective households rather than by individuals (Tang, 2015).
As a result, an agent in this model represents a collective of individuals
in a 100-m-by-100-m plot, which would be an appropriate size for a
collective decision-making unit in a rural village (containing an average
of 38 inhabitants) or an urban development project. The agent typol­
ogies were identified based on observations and interviews, being vil­
lagers, rebuilders, relocators, and incomers. The agents perform optional
behaviors with probabilities by time steps, with one step representing
one year (model details in Supplementary file - Appendix B).
3.2.1. Stakeholder-perceived urbanization suitability
To parameterize the probabilities of agents’ location choices in
The modeling began with an endogenous urbanization process, in
which agents make decisions about whether and how to urbanize and
where to settle based on their own willingness, without external re­
strictions from historical landscape pattern or land-use planning
(Table 2).
In each time step before the rural population reaches the planning
target, all villagers first determine whether or not to become urban res­
idents with probabilities based on interviews. Villagers who decide to
become urban residents then have two options: 1) rebuilding dwellings
on the original plot and 2) relocating to undeveloped plots adjoining
nearby towns with the highest perceived urbanization suitability. Based
on interviews, the choice of a villager was assumed to have a probability
determined by the urbanization suitability of their current location (the
higher the suitability, the more likely they will stay put). By making this
choice, the villager becomes a rebuilder or relocator, who then converts
the chosen location into an urban plot. In either case, the land-use
transition and resettlement process were assumed to face little resis­
tance because virtually all undeveloped lands are currently state-owned
(Yuan, 2017, p. 14) and the government covers all development costs
according to current policy.
Based on the urbanization process of Guangzhou (Liu et al., 2019),
we assumed that incomers (migrants from surrounding areas) first fill in
the already urbanized plots before more urban plots are developed.
There are two types of these urbanized plots: 1) the resettlement housing
plots, where only a small part is taken by urbanized villagers and the rest
becomes commercial housing (Tang, 2015), and 2) the existing urban
areas that emerged during the previous decade’s extensive construction,
which are still underpopulated (142 m2/person, on average) compared
with the planned density (90 m2/person). The choices of incomers in a
step are determined by interview-based proportions. When all the

5
J. Liu et al. Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555

Table 2 except those in planned industrial zones; one urban plot can have mixed
The rules for voluntary agent behaviors without external restrictions. functions except that industry and tourism are incompatible; any urban
Agent How it Behavior How it is How it plot’s economic functions will be influenced by its neighbors based on
appears options determined affects plots the agglomeration effect (Wang et al., 2015).
Villagers Existing in Urbanize or not Whether rural –
village plots population 3.2.3. Three optional urbanization strategies
meets In addition to the endogenous urbanization process based on lay
projection; stakeholders’ willingness, we modeled the strategies of guiding urban­
probabilities
based on
ization with historical landscape patterns and land-use planning by
proportions in imposing restrictions on agents’ autonomous behaviors, yielding three
interviews optional strategies (Fig. 3):
(Those who Probabilities –
choose to based on
1) Willingness-based strategy (Fig. 3a):
urbanize) villager-viewed
rebuild or urbanization
relocate suitability of This strategy assumes that the endogenous urbanization process
their current described above is unrestricted. All agents make decisions based on their
locations willingness about whether to urbanize, whether to rebuild in place or
Rebuilders Sourced Rebuild houses Change land
relocate, and where to live based on their perceived suitability. In
–
from villagers use;
who decide population following this strategy, future urban areas are likely to gather organi­
to urbanize remains cally around or along existing landscape elements or service facilities.
in place
Relocators Sourced Where to Villager-viewed Change land
2) History-based strategy (Fig. 3b):
from villagers relocate urbanization use and
who decide suitability; increase
to urbanize neighboring population This strategy assumes that urban growth follows the inhabiting
and move existing urban process in response to the historical landscape pattern. Villagers can still
areas choose whether to urbanize and whether to rebuild or relocate. How­
Incomers Appearing Settle in Whether existing
ever, the location choices of relocators and incomers, based on their
–
with current existing or new urban areas meet
growth rate urban plots planned density perceived suitability, are restricted by the polder structure. Specifically,
(Settle in Proportions in Increase agents first choose the undeveloped plots immediately beside existing
existing plots) interviews population canals; when all these plots are occupied, they then choose locations one
live in
plot away from canals, and so on. In this way, new urban areas extend
resettlement
plots or original linearly, beginning beside canals before gradually reaching the interiors
urban plots of polders. It is worth noting that the history-based strategy differs from
(Settle in new Urban resident- Change land the willingness-based strategy because local population are not neces­
plots) where to viewed use and sarily willing to adopt the traditional settlement development approach
settle urbanization increase
in the context of future urban development. In addition, incomers from
suitability, population
neighboring other regions may not value the historical landscape pattern when
existing urban making willingness-based decisions.
areas
3) Planning-based strategy (Fig. 3c):
urbanized areas meet the planned population density, additional urban
This strategy assumes that urbanization completely follows the cur­
areas will be developed for incomers on undeveloped plots next to
rent land-use planning, which promotes intensive development and
already urbanized areas with the highest perceived suitability. The land-
natural land conservation through zoning. Villagers can still choose
use development process was also assumed to be unhindered, as urban
whether to urbanize. However, as the planning requires “actively
development is encouraged and profitable.
guiding an aggregation of villagers to central cities and towns,” urban­
Additionally, to simulate the layout and richness of urban functions
ized villagers must relocate rather than rebuild in place. Relocators and
(the main categories being residence, commerce, industry, and tourism),
incomers can only choose locations, albeit based on their perceived
the model assumed that all urban plots have a residential function,

Fig. 3. Schematic diagrams of the three optional urbanization strategies based on a) lay stakeholders’ willingness, b) historical landscape pattern, and c) land-
use planning.

6
J. Liu et al.
suitability, within the urban development zones designated by the Land
Use Master Plan of Nansha New District, adjoining already urbanized
plots.
3.2.4. Scenarios reflecting trade-offs between strategies
The above strategies may coexist with different combinations of
trade-offs. To simulate this, we introduced two variable parameters,
Willingness-History (W-H) and Willingness-Planning (W-P), to represent
spectrums of potential external influences of the history- and planning-
based strategies on the endogenous process. Both parameters have five
adjustable integer values ranging from 0 to 4. Larger values represent
increased probabilities (0, 25 %, 50 %, 75 %, and 100 %) of an agent
complying with the historical or planning constraints or decreased
probabilities (100 %, 75 %, 50 %, 25 %, and 0) of acting autonomously
(except on the newly reclaimed Longxue Island, where incomers follow
current planning regardless of the variable values).
The two parameters are independent but work together to influence
each agent’s choices with combined probabilities. Compared with sim­
ply adjusting the proportions of choices, this approach may better reflect
the three strategies’ interactions in reality. For example, if W-H = 1 and
W-P = 1, i.e., both the history- and planning-based strategies have a 25
% chance of influencing or a 75 % chance of not influencing agent be­
haviors, the probabilities of different choices for any particular agent
would be 56.25 % acting voluntarily, 18.75 % following traditional
pattern, 18.75 % conforming to planning, and 6.25 % adhering to both
tradition and planning.
In total, there are 25 possible combinations of the values of W-H and
W-P, covering all the conceivable scenarios relating to the research
questions. Although some of the scenarios may not be realistic (i.e., W-H
or W-P equals 0 or 4 when all agents follow the same strategy), all of
these scenarios were simulated in order to systematically analyze the
potential effects of the varying adoption levels of the three strategies.
Further comparisons were then limited to five relatively realistic sce­
narios that reflect typical trade-offs between the strategies: willingness-
first, history-first, planning-first, balanced, and low-willingness (Table 3).
Considering that the development of Nansha, required by state and
local governments, would be an unavoidable reality (Cheng et al.,
2017), the modeling took the achievement of the government’s urban­
ization goal as a prerequisite. The population growth rate and ultimate
goal were control variables for all scenarios, and their simulated out­
comes were only influenced by W-H and W-P, i.e., the adoption levels of
the three strategies. Specifically, the population growth rate was a
constant (5.244 %) based on the previous 5-year average, the villagers
stopped participating in urbanization when the target rural population
(115,000) was met, and simulations ended when the total population
reached 2.3 million.
3.3. Sustainability assessment
As landscape sustainability is defined as the consistent provision of
landscape-specific ESs, the ES approach was applied to assess the
Table 3
The five focused scenarios that reflect typical trade-offs between the strategies.
Scenario Variable Description
values
Willingness- W-H = 1, W-P Low constraint levels of history and planning on voluntary
first =1 behaviors
History-first W-H = 3, W-P High constraint level of historical pattern on voluntary
=1 behaviors, low adoption of planning
Planning-first W-H = 1, W-P High constraint level of planning on voluntary behaviors, low
=3 adoption of history strategy
Balanced W-H = 2, W-P Medium constraint levels of history and planning on voluntary
=2 behaviors
Low- W-H = 3, W-P High constraint levels of history and planning on voluntary
willingness =3 behaviors
7
Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555
scenarios’ performances with regard to sustainability. Eleven ES in­
dicators were selected to assess the optional strategies’ impacts in
different aspects. The indicators were then aggregated using a multi­
functionality index to measure the overall sustainability of different
scenarios. These indices were calculated at every simulation step to
analyze the time pattern of sustainability.
3.3.1. Indicator selection, calculation, and aggregation
It has been suggested that landscape sustainability assessment should
be relevant to human well-being and land management (Cao et al., 2021;
Wu, 2013). Therefore, indicators in this study were selected and
developed based on the demands and knowledge of stakeholders (lay
and expert) acquired in the interviews, reflecting the environmental,
economic, and social dimensions of sustainability (Table 4). While there
have been suggestions of a cultural dimension for assessing the sus­
tainability of cultural landscapes (Selman, 2007), cultural ESs were
considered in the social dimension in this study.
As the assessment aimed to compare the alternative strategies’
relative performances rather than provide a thorough ES valuation, the
indicators measured ESs at the landscape level and were kept pragmatic.
Some indicators were landscape metrics or other established indices.
Meanwhile, some place-specific demands, which were difficult to
quantify directly, were estimates or proxies based on existing metrics or
other available data. Most of the indicators were calculated directly by
the agent-based model, while those based on landscape metrics (CIf,
SEDw, PCIu, and IJIu) were calculated with Fragstats v4 using landscape
pattern datasets exported during the simulation process. For a majority
of the indicators, higher values can be interpreted as increased perfor­
mance, except for DDu, EVu, DMu, and DRu (measuring distance or
cost), of which smaller values signify better performance.
To measure and compare the overall provision of the multiple
landscape-specific ESs or landscape sustainability, we employed the
Multiple Ecosystem Services Landscape Index (MESLI) to aggregate the
above ES indicators, which is calculated as the sum of normalized in­
dicators (Rodríguez-Loinaz et al., 2015; Stürck & Verburg, 2017). In
addition, to reflect the diverging demands of different stakeholder
groups (villagers, urban residents, and experts), we modified the MESLI
with a weighted approach, in which ES indicators were weighted ac­
cording to their stakeholder-perceived importance (Hölting et al., 2020;
Manning et al., 2018). Although more objective methods to assign
weights for developing aggregated sustainability indices exist (e.g., Lu
et al., 2021), this study used AHP based on the average Likert scale
ratings in interviews in order to reflect different stakeholders’ opinions
and trade-offs. The weighted MESLI is then calculated as:
∑n ( ESi − ESimin )
weighted MESLI = × wi
i=1 ES
imax − ESimin
where n is the number of ES indicators, ESi is the indicator i, wi is the
weight for indicator i, and ESimin and ESimax are the minimum and
maximum observed values of ESi, respectively. The indicators with
Probabilities of an agent’s behavior options
Willingness- History- Planning- History- &
based based based planning-based
56.25 % 18.75 % 18.75 % 6.25 %
18.75 % 56.25 % 6.25 % 18.75 %
18.75 % 6.25 % 56.25 % 18.75 %
25 % 25 % 25 % 25 %
6.25 % 18.75 % 18.75 % 56.25 %
J. Liu et al. Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555

Table 4
The ES indicators for sustainability assessment and their calculation methods and implications.
Service Indicator Calculation Explanation Implication

Environmental Dimension
∑n
Water Rainwater Storage (RS) RS = i=1 (1 − ri ) × a × p n is the number of plots; ri is the runoff Higher values indicate increased water
management coefficient of plot i; a is the area of a plot; p storage, underground water recharging and
is the mean annual precipitation land subsidence mitigation (Ao et al., 2015)
∑n
Mean Drainage Distance i=1 dwi n is the number of urban plots; dwi is the Lower values indicate better drainage,
DDu =
of urban plots (DDu) n distance to the nearest waterbody of urban reducing flood risk
plot i
∑n
Biodiversity Connectance Index of i=1 ci n is the number of farmland patches; ci Higher values indicate increased
CIf = × 100
farmland patches (CIf) n × (n − 1) equals 1 or 0 dependent on whether connectivity of farmland patches (potential
2 connections (within 200 m) exist between habitat changing), promoting biodiversity
farmland patch i and other farmland
patches
∑n
Similarity-weighted i=1 (ei × si ) n is the number of patch types; ei is the Higher values indicate increased amount
SEDw =
Edge Density of A length of edge between patch type i and and quality of riparian areas, promoting
waterbody patches water patches; si is the similarity weight biodiversity
(SEDw) between patch i and water; A is the total
landscape area
Economic Dimension
∑n
Crop production Mean Normalized i=1 NDVIi n is the number of farmland plots; NDVIi is Higher values indicate increased crop
NDVIf =
Differential Vegetation n the NDVI of farmland plot i productivity (Benedetti & Rossini, 1993)
Index of farmland plots
(NDVIf)
∑n
Construction cost Earthwork Volumes of EVu = i=1 (h − hi ) × a n is the number of new urban plots;‾h is Lower values indicate less earthwork
savings new urban plots (EVu) the average elevation of existing urban required to reach safe altitude (main source
plots of the same town; hi is the elevation of construction cost variation)
of new urban plot i; a is the area of a plot
∑n
Mixed urban Mean Function Types in i=1 fi n is the number of new urban plots; fi is the Higher values indicate increased diversity
FTu =
functions new urban plots (FTu) n number of function types in new urban of urban functions, promoting diverse
plot i economic activity, income streams, and
employment (Raman & Roy, 2019)
Urban cohesion Patch Cohesion Index of PCIu = n is the number of urban plots; pi and ai are Higher values indicate increased
( ∑n )( )
urban patches (PCIu) pi 1 − 1 the perimeter and area of urban patch i; A aggregation of urban patches, promoting
1 − ∑n i=1√̅̅̅̅ 1 − √̅̅̅̅ × is the total landscape area efficient economic processes (He et al.,
i=1 pi ai A
100 2020)
Social Dimension
∑n
Regional Mean Distance to i=1 dmi n is the number of urban plots; dmi is the Lower values indicate increased availability
DMu =
connection Motorways of urban n distance to the nearest motorways of to motorway, estimating connection to
plots (DMu) urban plot i adjacent regions
∑n
Transportation Mean Distance to Roads i=1 dri n is the number of urban plots; dri is the Lower values indicate increased availability
DRu =
convenience of urban plots (DRu) n distance to the nearest roads of the urban to main roads, estimating transportation
plot i convenience
( )
Aesthetics and Interspersion & ∑n e ei n is the number of patch types; ei is the Higher values indicate more contacts of
− i=1 ∑n i × ln ∑n
social relations Juxtaposition Index i=1 ei i=1 ei total length of edge between patch type i urban patches with natural and village
IJIu =
between urban and other ln(n − 1) and urban patches patches, estimating potentials for good
patches (IJIu) views, ecotourism, cultural diversity, and
social relations

Note. In this table, “patch” refers to its landscape ecological meaning, i.e., a landscape area different from surrounding areas, while the pixel grid in the agent-based
model is referred to as “plot” instead of “patch”.

smaller values indicating better performance were subtracted from 1
after normalization. The weighted MESLI ranges from 0 to 1, with higher
values indicating increased sustainability, which can only be interpreted
in relative terms in this study.
3.3.2. Time-series data analysis
To assess the sustainability of the dramatically changing landscape,
all indicators were calculated at every simulation step, with the resultant
time-series data analyzed on two timescales (a short and a long time­
scale). Since the model involves randomness to reflect probabilistic
decisions, simulations of the same scenario would not produce identical
outcomes. As a result, each of the 25 scenarios was simulated 100 times,
yielding a data group (n = 100) for each indicator in each step. On both
timescales, ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis H tests were conducted (with the
multi-year average) to identity whether there was a significant differ­
ence between each indicator generated by simulations of the 25
scenarios.
To explore the influences of different adoption levels of the strategies
on the ES indicators, we used multiple linear regression with ordinary
least squares to analyze the correlations between each indicator (with
the median of the 100 simulations) and two predictors of W-H and W-P.
To make the predictors’ impacts on different indicators more compa­
rable, the indicators were normalized to their minimum and maximum
values in the simulation outcomes of the 25 scenarios (those with
smaller values indicating better performance were subtracted from 1).
The regressions were conducted on two timescales with multi-year av­
erages so that the different urbanization processes, rather than just the
final state, affected the result.
The MESLI weighted by different stakeholder groups’ opinions was
also calculated for every time step using the 11 ES indicator outputs
(with the median of 100 simulations). We conducted trend surface
analysis (using quadratic polynomials) to analyze the relationship be­
tween the overall landscape sustainability (multi-year average MESLI)
and different W-H and W-P combinations. The overall sustainability of
the five focused scenarios was then compared. The analysis and com­
parison were also conducted on the two timescales.
4. Results
4.1. Interview result analysis
Part I of the interviews revealed that, among the 63 villager

8
J. Liu et al.
interviewees, up to 89 % own<1 mu (0.067 ha) of farmland due to land
expropriation. Seventy-three percent were willing to progressively
become urban residents to improve their living standards and social
positions, of which 6.5 % were willing to urbanize within a year. Among
the willing-to-urbanize villagers, 61 % made a choice between
rebuilding and relocating, in which the proportion of rebuilding declines
as the distance from urbanized areas increases (84.6 %, 77.8 %, and 50
% in adjoining, near, and far groups, respectively). This supported our
assumption that urbanized villagers are more inclined to rebuild than
relocate when their current locations are more suitable for urbanization.
Meanwhile, 39 % of villagers failed to express an explicit preference and
chose “depending on the future surroundings of my current location.”
Among the 64 urban interviewees, choices for living with resettled vil­
lagers or only urban incomers were 62.5 % against 37.5 %, respectively.
In the spatial factors for suitability analysis (Part II of the interview),
the adjacency to existing villages was valued (average Likert scale above
2) only by villagers, while proximity to regional entrances/exits was
only appreciated by city dwellers. Among the same stakeholder group,
the qualitative judgments of the 11 valued factors were largely-one-
sided, with minorities accounting for relatively small proportions. The
average number of any interviewee’s preferences for the 11 factors that
were identical with the majorities’ choices was 9.4 (85.2 %) for villagers
and 9.5 (86.2 %) for urban residents. As a simplification, we used the
majorities’ qualitative judgments and perceived importance (Fig. 4) in
suitability analysis and modeling (otherwise there could be 121 very
similar suitability options for agents).
Fig. 5 displays the weights for the 11 ES indicators based on the three
stakeholder groups’ ratings (Part III of the interview). The villagers paid
particular attention to the mixed urban functions (FTu) because most of
them rely on diverse income streams other than agricultural production.
They also emphasized the drainage distance (DDu) and rainwater stor­
age (RS) because of a deep understanding of flood risk in this region. The
urban residents prioritized many social and economic services, espe­
cially the proximity to motorways (DMu) and roads (DRu) due to the
demand for connection to adjacent cities and efficient traffic. While lay
stakeholders mainly focused on their direct needs, the experts’ weight­
ing scheme was relatively balanced, with a slight emphasis on the
environmental dimension.
Fig. 4. Preferences and weights for factors affecting urbanization suitability based on the majority of villagers’ and urban residents’ qualitative judgements and
perceived importance in the interviews (negative weights indicate an opposite preference).
9
Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555
4.2. Land-use pattern and amount change
Simulations of different scenarios produced varied spatial pattern
changing processes and outcomes. Three single-strategy scenarios are
shown in Fig. 6 to highlight the disparities between the optional stra­
tegies. Despite difference in patterns, since the population growth rate
and target were control variables, simulations of all scenarios lasted the
same amount of time (19 steps), and their land-use area change curves
were similar (Fig. 7). It is worth noting that an abrupt changing point in
the curves of new urban and farmland areas appeared in the ninth year.
Before this point, new urban areas increased slowly because the popu­
lation density of existing urban plots had not reached the planned ca­
pacity. During this period, local villagers’ decisions were the main
driving force for the land-use change. Thereafter, the land-use change
accelerated, with the influx of incomers becoming the primary driver.
Considering this change, the model outcomes were analyzed on two
timescales: a short scale covering years 1–9 and a long scale covering the
entire period (years 1–19).
4.3. Impacts of optional strategies on different ESs and sustainability
On both timescales, significant differences (p < 0.005) existed in all
ES indicators between the 25 scenarios, and the multiple linear re­
gressions indicated strong relationships between all indicators and the
W-H/W-P values, with Prob (F-statistic) < 0.005 (Table 5). For most of
these relationships, the trends were identical on the two timescales, but
the magnitudes were greater on the long timescale. Generally, higher W-
H values (increased adoption of the history-based strategy) positively
affected all environmental performances while negatively impacting
most economic and social services. Higher W-P values (increased
adoption of the planning-based strategy), while increasing farmland
connectivity (CIf), urban cohesion (PCIu), and traffic convenience
(DRu), diminished all other services. Both W-H and W-P negatively
impacted crop production (NDVIf), urban function mixture (FTu), and
aesthetics and social relations (IJIu), which in turn suggested the
willingness-based strategy’s strengths. Meanwhile, their positive in­
fluences on farmland connectivity (CIf) indicated the willingness-based
strategy’s shortcoming.
J. Liu et al.
Fig. 5. Weighting schemes for the indicators based on the perceived importance expressed by different stakeholder groups (villagers, urban residents, and experts) in
the interviews.
The trend surface analysis demonstrates the relationship between the
overall sustainability (indicated by stakeholder-weighted MESLI) and
different strategy combinations (Fig. 8). In all subplots, conforming to
lay stakeholders’ willingness achieves the highest MESLI. As the adop­
tion levels of the history-based strategy (W-H) and the planning-based
strategy (W-P) increase, the MESLI decreases to varying degrees. As
shown by the contour lines in Fig. 8, on the short-term timescale,
increasing W-P causes a sharper decline of the MESLI than increasing W-
H. A similar trend can be observed for the villager- and expert-weighted
MESLI on the long-term scale, but not the urban resident-weighted
MESLI. On both timescales, increasing W-H has a less negative effect
on the MESLI weighted by experts than that weighted by non-experts,
because experts attached more values to the environmental indicators
that are positively correlated with W-H.
4.4. Sustainability of focused scenarios
Fig. 9 shows the temporal patterns of the stakeholder-perceived
overall sustainability (indicated by stakeholder-weighted MESLI) of
the five focused scenarios. During the entire process, most MESLI curves
first rose before falling. On the short timescale, there was an agreement
among all stakeholder groups, despite their varied weighting schemes,
on the five scenarios’ relative performances: the willingness-first scenario
performed best, immediately followed by the history-first scenario. The
balanced scenario, trying to reconcile the three strategies, produced
average results. The planning-first scenario performed poorly, and the
low-willingness scenario adhering to both the historical pattern and land-
use planning underperformed all others.
On the long timescale, while the willingness-first scenario remained
the best and low-willingness the worst, disagreement appeared between
the rankings of the history-first and planning-first scenarios. As the curves
showed, the performance of the history-first scenario declined more
quickly in the second decade. Meanwhile, the planning-first scenario,
which performed poorly in the short term, improved to varying degrees.
As shown by the long-term boxplots, the level of the planning-first sce­
nario became very close to that of the history-first scenario based on
villagers’ weighting scheme and even surpassed the latter based on
urban residents’ weights. However, according to experts’ weights, the
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Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555
planning-first scenario still significantly underperformed the history-first
scenario. Referring to the regression results, an explanation for the
divergence between the non-experts and experts could be that adhering
to historical landscape pattern negatively affected many economic and
social indicators that the non-experts emphasized unilaterally (notably
FTu and DRu); however, it positively impacted environmental indicators
valued by the experts (especially DDu and SEDw).
In this sense, the MESLI weighted by non-experts, particularly by
urban residents, measured weak sustainability, whereas expert-
weighted MESLI measured strong sustainability. This is further
demonstrated in Fig. 10. While the overall performances of willingness-
and planning-first urbanization scenarios appeared to be more sustain­
able according to the overall level of the 11 normalized indicators
(which equals the unweighted MESLI), the aggregated level of the
environmental indicators declined dramatically after the first decade.
Although the overall ES level in the history-first scenario dropped more
sharply in the last few years, the environmental indicators remained
much higher levels.
It is also worth noting that after around the 15th–17th year, most
MESLI levels exhibited a rapid decline. Many of them decreased to levels
much lower than the current situation, which could indicate that the
massive urbanization goal has exceeded the ecosystem’s capacity. In this
regard, rather than the currently projected population of 2.3 million, a
total population of around 1.8–2 million and an urbanized area of
around 155 km2 that appeared in the 15th–17th year would be a more
appropriate objective.
5. Discussion
We explored how the optional urbanization strategies based on lay
stakeholders’ willingness, historical landscape patterns, and land-use
planning, as well as their trade-offs, could affect the sustainability of
the Nansha landscape. Based on the research findings, some implications
for sustainable policymaking and planning practice, especially in the
Chinese context, can be discussed.
J. Liu et al.
Fig. 6. Spatial patterns in steps 9 and 19 of three single-strategy scenarios (among all the 19 steps in the 25 scenarios simulated), illustrating the varied spatial
pattern changing processes and results affected by different urbanization strategies.
5.1. Deficiency of top-down land-use planning
Land-use planning based on functional zoning is a prevalent instru­
ment in current Chinese urban and rural planning. It pursues intensive
land-resource utilization by spatially arranging human development and
natural protection based on landscape ecological principles (Wu et al.,
2020). Despite criticisms of its top-down manner, land-use planning is
favored for providing optimized spatial patterns, which are often proved
by landscape metrics (Gong et al., 2018). However, landscape analysis
should not treat quantification of spatial patterns as an end and ignore
how patterns affect processes (Li & Wu, 2004).
This study found that land-use planning could be insufficient for
sustainable urbanization of cultural landscapes due to the difficulty of
adapting it to specific landscape processes. While increased adoption of
land-use planning enhanced urban patch cohesion, it also limited urban
function mixture, which is crucial for local economic activities and
employment generation. Although the planning improved farmland
connectivity, it lowered the amount and quality of riparian habitats,
which would be more important for biodiversity in this reclaimed and
11
Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555
intensively cultivated land. The land-use plan also reduced the inter­
mixing of urban patches with natural patches (waterbodies, farmland,
and forests) and traditional villages. This could be beneficial from a
conservation-focused viewpoint, but it may jeopardize cultural services
such as ecotourism, cultural diversity, and urban–rural integration.
Furthermore, as the MESLI curves demonstrated, while land-use plan­
ning may perform well as a static goal, it limits the overall ES provision
during the entire process, which is what sustainability entails. As a
result, we suggest that land-use planning, despite its necessity as macro-
level guidance, should be applied with caution in rural urbanization to
avoid compromising spontaneous and vibrant local processes.
5.2. Advantage and future uncertainty of historical pattern
With the promotion of national policies such as “Rural Revitaliza­
tion” and “New Urbanization,” the preservation of historical-cultural
values has been highlighted in Chinese rural planning. However, poli­
cymakers and planners in China often focus on iconic elements or relics
while ignoring the relatively “ordinary” landscape-scale context, which
J. Liu et al. Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555

moderate development stage and in ecologically sensitive areas rather

than in a one-size-fits-all manner. Adhering to historical patterns while
neglecting the practical needs of the general public could also be an
example of expert-led elitism. Meanwhile, from a strong sustainability
perspective, because the history-based strategy outperforms the others
in the environmental aspect, there is a need to promote communication
between experts and non-experts on the values of ecological and cultural
services to long-term human well-being.

5.3. Necessity of respecting bottom-up willingness

Since 2014, the “New Urbanization” policy has been promoting a

Fig. 7. Land-use change curves in the 25 scenarios are similar. An abrupt
changing point exists in year 9 in the new urban and farmland areas, indicating
different phases of the urbanization process.
could be an example of “expert-led elitism” (Scott, 2011). Nevertheless,
historical landscape patterns, with their values, spatiotemporal changes,
and drivers in regional and territorial contexts, have received attention
in Chinese academia in recent years (Guo et al., 2021; Tang et al., 2019;
Wang & Lin, 2018), which has the potential to influence future policy­
making and planning.
Our results suggest that development based on the polder structure
can benefit continuous ecological ES provision and short-term overall
performance. In addition, inheriting the historical pattern itself can
provide many cultural ESs that are difficult to quantify (e.g., knowledge
systems, educational values, and sense of place). If the goal is moderate
urbanization, the history-first scenario would be desirable in mitigating
trade-offs between ecological protection, human development, and
cultural inheritance. However, inherited patterns may not guarantee
sustainability in the face of drastic changes (Selman, 2012). As the re­
sults revealed, the history-first scenario may be insufficient for massive
urbanization due to some weaknesses in the socioeconomic aspects. In
this sense, the history-based strategy would be better to adopt in the
shift from “land-oriented” to “people-oriented” urbanization, with the
market rather than the government taking the lead. However, the pre­
vailing practice still relies on zoning plans enacted through land
expropriation on the one hand (Tang, 2015) and tax cuts, land subsidies,
and fiscal investment on the other hand (Shen & Shen, 2019). In this
case study, while the government’s urbanization agenda has been
accepted by most stakeholders, an impediment to “people-oriented”
urbanization would be restrictions in current planning on the urbanized
villagers’ and incomers’ choices of (re)settlement methods and locations
based on their willingness.
The results showed that the willingness-first scenario, enabling more
micro-scale adaptations than any one-size-fits-all approach, had the best
performance in the overall sustainability assessments from all stake­
holders’ perspectives. Although this scenario resulted in a less coherent
urban morphology, it maximized urban function diversity, urban-nature
contact and urban–rural integration, among other difficult-to-quantify
social benefits. As a result, we suggest that urbanization policies and
planning, with necessary guidance regarding land-use amounts and
spatial configuration, should give more credit to voluntary mechanisms.
Alongside the prevailing method of relocating urbanized villagers to
towns, urbanizing in original locations can also be encouraged. Apart
from zoning, development can rely on market-based mechanisms that
reflect stakeholders’ actual demands. To identify and integrate these
bottom-up perspectives, policymaking and planning processes should
put more emphasis on stakeholder participation.
5.4. Weak versus strong sustainability of urbanization
Huang et al. (2015) suggested that the measurement of urban sus­
tainability should be clear about whether weak or strong sustainability is
being gauged, and that at least one strong sustainability indicator should
be included in the assessment by combining indicator sets and composite

Table 5
Relationships between ES indicators and W-H/W-P revealed by multiple linear regressions on two timescales.
Indicator Short timescale (years 1–9) Long timescale (years 1–19)
Prob (F- Coef W-H (p < Coef W-P (p < Prob (F- Coef W-H (p < Coef W-P (p <
statistic) 0.005) 0.005) statistic) 0.005) 0.005)

Environmental dimension
Rainwater Storage (RS) 0.0000 0.0057 − 0.0037 0.0000 0.0159 − 0.0143
Mean Drainage Distance of urban plots (DDu) 0.0000 0.0196 − 0.0202 0.0000 0.0302 − 0.0575
Connectance Index of farmland patches (CIf) 0.0000 0.0073 0.0095 0.0000 0.0232 0.0454
Similarity-weighted Edge Density of waterbody patches 0.0000 0.0194 − 0.0119 0.0000 0.0280 − 0.0428
(SEDw)
Economic dimension
Mean NDVI of farmland plots (NDVIf) 0.0000 − 0.0052 − 0.0105 0.0000 − 0.0252 − 0.0290
Earthwork Volumes of new urban plots (EVu) 0.0001 − 0.0013 0.0014 0.0028 − 0.0040 − 0.0031
Mean Function Types in new urban plots (FTu) 0.0000 − 0.0503 − 0.0187 0.0000 − 0.0598 − 0.0144
Patch Cohesion Index of urban patches (PCIu) 0.0000 − 0.0173 0.0339 0.0000 − 0.0446 0.0605
Social dimension
Mean Distance to Motorways of urban plots (DMu) 0.0000 0.0206 − 0.0470 0.0000 0.0037 − 0.0834
Mean Distance to Roads of urban plots (DRu) 0.0000 − 0.0182 0.0273 0.0000 − 0.0718 0.0251
Interspersion & Juxtaposition Index between urban and 0.0000 − 0.0493 − 0.0861 0.0000 − 0.0791 − 0.0524
other patches (IJIu)

Notes. For all indicators, positive coefficients indicate positive impacts, and vice versa. The coefficient values should be interpreted in relative terms, with larger
absolute values suggesting greater impacts, allowing for horizontal and vertical comparisons.

12
J. Liu et al.
Fig. 8. Trend surface analysis of the impacts of different urbanization strategies (different combinations of W-H and W-P values) on the landscape sustainability
perceived by different stakeholders (indicated by the multi-year average stakeholder-weighted MESLI) on two timescales. The same colors correspond to the same
MESLI values in all subplots.
indices. This study used stakeholder-weighted MESLI that aggregated 11
ES indicators to measure the sustainability of the urbanization process.
Among the different stakeholders’ weighting schemes, the total weights
for environmental, economic, and social dimensions were 0.41, 0.35,
and 0.24 assigned by villagers, 0.27, 0.35, and 0.37 assigned by urban
residents, and 0.46, 0.29, and 0.25 assigned by experts. Villagers and
experts assigned higher weights to the environmental dimension, which
indicates that in the urbanization process of the cultural landscape, any
loss of natural capital has to be complemented by significantly more
human-made capital. In this regard, the villager- and expert-weighted
MESLI (especially the expert-weighted MESLI with more balanced
weights for different environmental indicators) can be considered as
measuring strong sustainability of urbanization, while the urban
resident-weighted MESLI measured weak sustainability. As shown in
Fig. 10, the willingness- and planning-first scenarios saw a dramatic
decline in the environmental services during the second decade, despite
high overall sustainability levels. In other words, the high overall per­
formance was contributed by the growth of the economic and social
capitals during the urbanization process at the cost of environmental
capital. This indicates weak sustainability of urbanization, which is
essentially unsustainable from the perspective of long-term develop­
ment (Wilson & Wu, 2017). In light of this, apart from respecting lay
stakeholders’ willingness, the results based on experts’ weighting
schemes, which support the merit of the historical landscape pattern,
should also be emphasized in decision-making.
5.5. ABM approach and temporal pattern analysis
Many models have been used in prior research to discuss strategy
options and trade-offs, such as the System Dynamics model and the
Cellular Automata model (Lauf et al., 2012; Liu et al., 2017). However,
these models can hardly reflect local-level human decisions and feed­
backs in response to changes. By contrast, the structure of ABM mirrors
that of complex adaptive systems in the real world, which are under­
pinned by individuals’ interactions and feedbacks with each other, their
environments, and macro-level factors and changes. This structure
would be essential for modeling cultural landscapes, because local-level
human decisions and human–natural interactions play central roles in
13
Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555
their evolution. In discussing planning options and trade-offs, agent-
based models that reflect local-level reactions and evolution paths to the
objectives can shed light on the emergent and unintended consequences
of macro-level policies (Brown et al., 2013; Verburg et al., 2016).
Moreover, the ABM approach can provide practical insights into
cultural landscapes’ sustainable transformation through a combination
of qualitative and quantitative methods. In cultural landscape research,
qualitative methods such as field observations and interviews on land­
scape morphology and local activities and demands have played an
essential role (Di Fazio & Modica, 2018; Scott, 2011). Meanwhile,
simulation modeling and statistical analysis enable experimental
research to explore and assess future outcomes in response to alternative
interventions (Van Berkel & Verburg, 2012). Integrating human be­
haviors and exploratory scenarios, ABM can bridge the two methods,
making research more transferable to planning and policymaking
(Rouleau & Zupko, 2019).
In response to the notion that sustainability is essentially a process
rather than a state (Haines-Young, 2000; Wu, 2013), we used the
time-series data generated by ABM to evaluate the temporal pattern of
the performance rather than that at a single or a few time nodes.
Including temporal patterns in assessment could have a substantial
impact on the results. For example, while the current planning may
attain acceptable outcomes in the end, we found its performance during
the whole urbanization process unsatisfactory. Furthermore, the tem­
poral patterns allow decision-making to adapt to specific urbanization
stages on finer timescales, which may facilitate continuous learning in
the future (Bond et al., 2012).
6. Conclusion
As rapid and massive urbanization has become an inevitable reality
for many cultural landscapes, it is critical to understand how potential
urbanization strategies would affect the sustainability of these land­
scapes. By modeling different adoption levels and trade-offs of three
typical strategies and testing their outcomes over time, we found that a
sustainable urbanization process in Nansha can be achieved by allowing
villagers and migrants to make their own decisions with minimal
necessary supervision. While history- or planning-based strategies may
J. Liu et al. Landscape and Urban Planning 228 (2022) 104555

Fig. 9. Temporal patterns of weighted MESLI (integration of 11 normalized ES indicators) were used to assess the landscape sustainability of the five focused
scenarios from stakeholders’ perspectives. The curves in the middle row show the changing processes of weighted MESLI during the simulation period. The dis­
tributions of the time-series data are compared with boxplots on 9-year (top row) and 19-year (bottom row) timescales. In all graphs, higher values indicate increased
sustainability, which can only be interpreted in relative terms.

deliver acceptable results in certain aspects and over certain periods,
they would be less effective in the whole urbanization process due to
their limiting local adaptations and hence many context-specific ESs.
However, historical pattern-based strategy produced better environ­
mental performance during the urbanization process, which can
contribute to a stronger sustainability. Combining these results, we
suggest that sustainable rural development should place lay stake­
holders’ willingness first; landscape pattern preservation and land-use
planning are necessary, but they must consider the place-specific pro­
cesses behind spatial patterns based on communications between lay
and expert stakeholders.
Exploring and assessing scenarios over time with ABM is a practical
method in decision-making for a cultural landscape’s sustainable
transformation. In further research, more place-specific case studies,
applying and advancing exploratory modeling and temporal pattern
assessment, are needed to shed more light on the unprecedented chal­
lenges that contemporary landscapes face. New forms of public
engagement and feedback are also required to address the inherent
uncertainty in modeling.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.

14
J. Liu et al.
Fig. 10. Stack plots of the 11 normalized ES indicators in the willingness-first, history-first, and planning-first scenarios show the contributions of different ESs to the
overall sustainability of urbanization during the simulation period. Environmental indicators are represented in green, while other indicators are in red.
Data availability
The authors have shared the link to the data in the supplementary
materials.
Acknowledgments
This research is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China (52108051) and Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong
Province, China (2021A1515010924; 2018A0303130017). We would
also like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their
constructive comments on early drafts of this paper.
Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104555.
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