Dynamic simulation and analysis of land use competition patterns to support sustainable territorial spatial management: a case study of Shenyang City, Northeast China

Under the context of territorial spatial planning in the new era, it is of great significance to analyze the future land use competition pattern to construct a sustainable and adaptive management strategy for territorial spatial development and utilization protection. Taking Shenyang, a megacity in Northeast China, as the case study area, and the geographic information system technologies and the patch-generation land use simulation (PLUS) model was used to simulate the land use competition pattern in 2030 under four scenarios. Meanwhile, the dynamic evolution of territorial spatial structure competition was monitored based on the perspective of agricultural, ecological, and construction land space. The results show that land use competition was driven by food security, economic growth, and ecological protection. The results showed that (1) the most frequent changes in cultivated land and construction land were found in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020, and their competitive advantage among land use types was obvious. As for the driving mechanism, the influencing effect of socioeconomic factors on land use type competition was more significant than that of natural factors. (2) The competitive dominance scenario of cultivated land protection and the synergistic dominance scenario of cultivated land, ecological, and construction could help optimize and control the land use competition pattern. (3) The information entropy and equilibrium index of the territorial spatial structure increase in both scenarios; the dominance index decreases, and the proportion of agricultural, ecological, and construction space is more coordinated. The results may assist a holistic understanding of land use change to coordinate the competition among agricultural, ecological, and construction space and facilitate the realization of high-quality territorial spatial development goals.