Abstract: A case study was done of Daxing District in Beijing, using the landscape pattern and spatial analysis method, to explore characteristics of spatial variation of land use in metropolitan suburban areas from the angle of distribution and location of different industries. Results show that 1) the district as a whole is high in land use rate, but not even. The northern part is higher than the southern part in comprehensive level of land use as a result of distribution of different industries and their locations varying in distance from the city, towns, villages and roads, and  key towns are higher than general towns in complehensive level of land use; 2) agricultural lands high in intensity of land use, such as facilitated farmland, orchard land and facilitated arable land, account for a large percentage of all the agricultural land and are concentrated around the villages or towns and along the roads, of which the major affecting factors are convenience and cost of production; and 3) the land, regardless of type of land use is high in fragmentation and low in agglomeration degree and scale. It is, therefore, urgent to reconstruct the village spatial system through rearrangement of the land, and optimize the land use structure and spatial distribution of agricultural land and non-agricultural industrial land by making full use of the advantages of circular agriculture and multi-functions of the farmland so as to further raise its comprehensive land use efficiency.

Key words: metropolitan suburban, landscape metrics, degree of land use, spatial variation