Urbanization and conservation serve as the twin towers in the sustainable development of coastal areas, rendering it necessary to achieve balance between socioeconomic prosperity and marine environment health. Although China’s marine protected areas (MPAs) have been extensively boosted in the last decades, the rapid expansion of urbanization clashes with MPA construction, resulting in coastal squeeze and urbanization-conservation imbalance. The quantification and simulation of coastal squeeze require both econometric and generative models to capture the magnitude and interactive patterns of human-ocean conflicts. Using long-term satellite remote sensing images of urban built-up area and marine protected areas, the study first delivers an econometrics-based quantitative panel analysis of Chinese coastal cities’ coastal squeeze between urban expansion and marine conservation during 1980-2022. The quantified degree and trends of urbanization-conservation squeeze were used to build system dynamics (SD) and agent-based models (ABMs) for locality-specific geospatial simulation and prediction of human-ocean extrusions under certain conditions of population, distance to coast, economic development, marine species, etc. Horizontal and longitudinal comparisons reveal regional differences and chronological evolution of urbanization-conservation disparities in the coastal areas alongside the four China Seas, discovering untraditional facts. The gradient of squeeze between urbanization and conservation aligns with the uneven development of coastal areas, and are dependent on the characteristics of marine species such as Sousa chinensis, etc. The study aims to reconcile urbanization-conservation conflicts based on maximized welfare and provide references for further studies to unravel the synergies and trade-offs between coastal development and marine conservation of global coastal cities at the dawn of the 2030 Agenda.
 

Sustainable Development Goals, China, marine protected areas, coastal squeeze, urban expansion