Multi-Scenario Simulation of Urban-Rural Land Use Spatial Reconstruction in Highly Urbanized Areas: A Case Study from the Southern Jiangsu Region

China's rural population flowing into highly urbanized areas has led to the spatial reconstruction of urban-rural land use. Exploring the laws and trends of urban-rural land use in highly urbanized areas is of great significance in promoting rural transformation. This paper takes the southern Jiangsu region as a research area and uses a system dynamics (SD) model to simulate the demand for different land types based on economic, social, policy, and environmental (ESPE) factors. Future land use simulation (FLUS) is used to simulate the spatial evolution trend of urban-rural land use based on point-axis elements. The results show that the agricultural production space is severely squeezed by the urban living space. Under the scenario of rapid expansion, the decrease in arable land quantity and the demand area for rural residential areas are the largest. Under the scenario of high-quality development, the decrease in arable land area and the demand for land in rural residential areas are lowest. Based on the spatial simulation, it is reported that the areas with more intense land use spatial reconstruction in the three scenarios are mainly concentrated in the region's urban-rural border areas. The future evolution of urban-rural land is summarized into three models: (1) single-center-driving expansion, (2) patchy expansion near the city center, and (3) multi-center-driving expansion. This paper proposes targeted policy recommendations to provide a scientific reference for solving the conflict between urban and rural land use.