Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity?

Urban planners and policy makers are confronted with tremendous pressures to develop city management strategies for sustainable land use planning in order to counterpart unprecedented rates of agricultural land conversion for urban uses. In addition, a wide range of challenges have intricate the urban space. Land market at the urban fringe of a megacity is a complex form of interlinked characteristics, whose mechanisms can be explained by understanding the demand from the inner city, supply of land at the periphery and attitudes of different actors playing a role in the land market. This paper discusses the conceptual issues of land market at the urban periphery of a megacity in order to understand the actors of agricultural land conversion. It explains the implications of economic development, government policies, land ownership, planning control, land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion. In specific, growth boundary will not only increase land price, congestion and dis-amenities of the inner city but also evokes rapid expansion of the city. Impact of land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion is graphically explained to justify that land speculation booms rapid urban expansion. Critical discussion of agricultural land conversion urges researchers, planners and policy makers to carefully consider all available attributes before working with the dynamic land market at the periphery of a megacity.