Urban development sustainability, industrial structure adjustment, and land use efficiency in China

•We explore how urbanization affects industrial structure adjustment and land use•The effect of land use efficiency on industrial structure is divergent in China•Tailored policy recommendation to different regions for urban development sustainability It remains unclear on how industrial structure adjustment interacts with urban land use efficiency and how urbanization affects their interaction, despite its significance for urban development sustainability. We explore such interactions in China based on a panel dataset of 31 provincial administrative units from 1978 to 2018. The results show that as urbanization proceeds, the industrial structure optimization exhibits a positive linear correlation with urban land use efficiency, while the relationship between industrial structure upgrade and urban land use efficiency depends on level of urbanization, which follows an inverted U-shape. The effect of urban land use efficiency on the optimization of industrial structure is divergent across provinces. We also find that a higher level of urbanization facilitates the positive interactions between industrial structure adjustment and urban land use efficiency in the central and western regions of China, but the effect is attenuated in eastern China. We propose policy recommendations tailored to different regions with distinct levels of economic development status and industrial structure for urban development sustainability.