Achieving sustainable development by reducing income inequality: The differential impact of industrial land expansion in urban agglomerations

Reducing inequality is essential to achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). This study aims to clarify the relationship between industrial land expansion, which is closely related to global urban expansion, and inequality reductions and propose strategies to reduce inequality from the perspective of resource utilization. A geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model is to analyze the impact of industrial land expansion on the urban–rural income gap using data from 215 cities in 19 urban agglomerations in China from 2007 to 2018. The estimation results show that the scale and structure of industrial land expansion differently impact the urban–rural income gap: the expansion scale and structure mainly have a shrinking and expanding effect, respectively. The stage differences of impacts are obvious, with 2013 as the turning point. Finally, there are significant differences between urban agglomerations. The shrinking effect of the expansion scale is smaller in the mature stage than in the development and cultivation stage, while the expanding effect of the expansion structure is more apparent in the cultivation stage. Thus, the differential characteristics and laws of urban agglomeration development can provide useful insights for policymakers as they help to understand the characteristics of industrial land use in urban agglomeration at different stages of development and to reasonably allocate industrial land resources, giving full play to their important role in achieving SDGs.