Integrated Approach to the Vital Mechanism Theory and Ant Colony Algorithm for Optimized Land Use Allocation: A Case Study of the Liangjiang New Area in Chongqing

Optimal allocation of land use is essential to promote regional economic and social development.However,research on such allocations in development zones is limited.This paper proposes a new land use allocation method for development zones and tests its feasibility.Based on prior research,this study predicts the developmental stage of a development zone and sets the objective functions and constraint conditions accordingly.This paper then measures the conversion relationship between the land use types in an unit according to the land use suitability results and the vital mechanism theory and uses the ant colony algorithm to construct a land use optimization model on the basis of this conversion relatonship.The model is then applied successfully to a case study of the Liangjiang New Area,Chongqing,China.The results show that the vital mechanism theory better reflects the relationship between land use types.The economic benefits increase 3.5 times and compactness improves by 46.5%between the initial year(2009)and the optimized year(2020),after the proposed model is applied.