Simulating Sustainable County-Level Land Use by Integrating the Mechanical Equilibrium Model with the Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm

Multifunctional land use has gained increasing attention for reconciling societal (life function), economic (production function), and environmental (ecological function) development needs and addressing sustainable land use challenges in rapidly urbanizing regions. Consistent with mainstream international land use functions (LUFs), this study’s production-living-ecological (PLE) framework covers three key land functions, matching global research paradigms. To develop a sustainable county-level land use quantitative structure optimization model, this study innovatively integrates a mechanical equilibrium model with the multi-objective genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), overcoming the limitations of conventional qualitative production-living-ecological spaces (PLES) optimization. Furthermore, by establishing a mapping relationship between urbanization drivers and PLES functional evolution, it also enables structural optimization across urbanization subsystems. The optimization results indicate the following adjustment directions: southern coastal and southwestern counties require targeted population and socioeconomic urbanization improvements, while northern counties demand differentiated ecological urbanization regulation, and southeastern coastal areas should prioritize ecological protection. Most counties exhibit cropland and construction land expansion alongside woodland shrinkage, featuring expanded production and living spaces but contracted ecological functions. In contrast, certain counties achieve coordinated sustainability by eliminating inefficient construction land. This study operationalizes macroscopic PLE coordination into feasible quantitative strategies, enriching optimization methodologies and providing transferable insights for territorial spatial governance.