Before the housing reform in 1994, it was hard to imagine that land and housing could become one of the strong driving forces for China's long-term economic growth. After the reform, China's real estate sector has attracted tremendous investment and consumption. Correspondingly, urban land has become the most valuable resource controlled by the government. Then the government has transformed land transfer revenues into public investment, laying the foundation for the prosperity of the urban economy. Around land and housing, China's cities have developed a complex economic growth model. This book hopes to clearly show readers the formation, development, advantages and disadvantages of this model. As a start, this chapter attempts to provide a general theoretical framework to explain the role of land in China's urban economic development. Specifically, this chapter mainly investigates the following contents: (a) the function of land in the urban economic system, (b) the main players in the urban economy and their behaviors, and (c) the consequences of the interaction among them.