The urban and rural areas of the Metropolitan District of Quito (DMQ) have experienced an aggressive urbanization process in the last two decades, which in many cases has changed the most appropriate land use as determined by the local government. This problem is exacerbated by poor land use planning in a city that is growing in an uncontrolled and disorderly manner toward rural areas, as well as by the accelerated growth of rural localities.

Agricultural terraces provide farmers in hilly landscapes with effective ways to increase the area available for crops. They mitigate the risks of soil erosion and promote crop productivity by slowing surface water runoff and retaining moisture. As in other parts of the world, terraces have been constructed and used in the Mediterranean for millennia. The availability of terraced agriculture had important socio-economic, ecological, and environmental implications for past societies.

Increasing farmers’ income has always been the core task of China’s land reform. In 2017, a nationwide pilot project on the use of collective construction land for the construction of rental housing was launched. This study employed the synthetic difference-in-differences method to examine whether the reform contributed to the growth of farmers’ property income.