Abstract: The choice of evaluation method of land intensive use is the key factor for comprehensive and objective reflection of intensive land use in development zones. In order to explore a more suitable evaluation method, this paper evaluated 12 development zones in Nanjing City, by using matter-element model and comprehensive evaluation method to analyze the land intensive use level and efficiency. The results showed that: The main limiting factors of intensive land use in Nanjing development zones are different due to the main factors like volume ratio of enterprise land, building density of enterprise land, input intensity of construction land, and output intensity of construction land and so on; There are significant differences of intensive land level among Nanjing’s Development Zones. For example, the intensive level of National Development Zone is higher than Provincial Development Zone, and the Hi-tech Development Zone is higher than the traditional economic development zone. Compared with the comprehensive evaluation method, the matter-element model can not only response comprehensive information of the research object, but also can reflect the distribution of single index and the stability of research object. The rank of intensive land use is different from the land intensive use efficiency, it showed that the development zone should not only improve its intensive utilization level, but also improve the intensive use efficiency.