Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) for Urban-Rural Coordinated Development in China

Against the background of current public policy of urban-rural coordinated development, a key land policy issue is how to deal with the conflict between urban expansion and farmland protection. By analyzing three major types of externality in urban-rural land use and the current trial of urban-rural hook-up land use policy, we propose establishing markets for transfer of development rights (TDR) at both regional level and metropolitan level. In this way, market mechanism and land use planning are integrated. In the regional market the quotas for urban-rural hook-up trial or some land use quotas are traded; at the metropolitan level, the market participants are peasant collectives who trade the development rights. Some technical details and policy implications are also discussed in the paper