From Growth-Oriented to Sustainability-Oriented: How Does the Transformation of Development Goals Reshape Urban Land Supply? An Analysis Based on a Spatial General Equilibrium Model

Following the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) process at the Rio+20 Summit, China has progressively strengthened sustainability-oriented considerations in development target setting and administration cadre performance assessment, which provides an institutional window to examine how the transformation of development goals reshapes urban land supply patterns. This study develops a spatial general equilibrium model and uses panel data for 286 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2021 to examine how the transformation of development goals affects urban land supply patterns. The results show that higher economic growth targets significantly expand total land supply, raise the ratio of industrial to residential land supply, and tighten floor-area-ratio (FAR) regulation. “Soft constraint” wording dampens the effect on land supply scale but strengthens the effects on land supply structure and FAR regulation, while the degree of vertical and horizontal target escalation generates substantial heterogeneity in these relationships. Moreover, after governance shifted from growth-oriented to sustainability-oriented objectives, the marginal effectiveness of using land supply structure and FAR regulation to deliver predetermined growth targets declined significantly. This study provides empirical evidence and policy-relevant insights for improving sustainability-oriented target accountability systems and urban governance incentive mechanisms.