Abstract: Arable land is an important basic resource for human existence and social and economic development, which possesses significant production capacity of goods and materials. This paper examines the impact of the multi-functional transformation and the coordinated development of cultivated land in the urban agglomeration at the middle reaches of the Yangtze River on the alleviation of the complex social contradictions in the process of rapid urbanization and on the promotion of the sustainable development of urban economy. By making use of the social economy and the Landsat monitoring data, it explores the relationship between land use transformation and multi-function level. The findings show that the transformation between cultivated land, forest land, grassland and construction land in the urban agglomeration at the middle reaches of the Yangtze River is the most significant. The land use transformation is significant in Wuhan Metropolitan Area and in the urban agglomeration around Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan, and in the urban agglomeration around Poyang Lake the land use diversity is better. The productive and economic function -- the social security function of farmland utility as a whole keeps its balance during the fluctuation, the productive and economic function -- the ecological landscape function as a whole keeps a state of balanced development, and the social security function -- the ecological landscape function as a whole keeps a coordinated development in the fluctuation.

Key words: farmland utilization, multifunctional transformation, trade-off and synergy, spatial and temporal characteristics