Abstract
Urbanization has brought notable benefits for cities, but has also resulted in severe and diverse challenges in China. Previous studies have contributed to the definitions and evaluation of urbanization. However, there remain a great deal of ambiguities regarding urban comprehensive carrying capacity, and its measurable indicators still need further exploration given the urban development. This study aims to explore a model for evaluating urban comprehensive carrying capacity and thus to promote urban development. A total of 48 indicators which fell into 8 subsystems were identified to evaluate the urban comprehensive carrying capacity through literature reviews and interviews. The indicator set was developed for evaluation indicator selecting. Meanwhile, the dynamic system was explored, and an evaluation model based on the entire array polygon method was designed to evaluate urban comprehensive carrying capacity. Finally, a case study was conducted to provide suggestions for the decision-maker to implement the evaluation model. The results of this study show that the evaluation indicator system was dynamic due to urban development. Meanwhile, the model of the entire array polygon method was able to effectively evaluate urban comprehensive carrying capacity through the case study. Furthermore, this study found that there is an imbalance among subsystems in urban development according to the standard deviation. The findings are useful for setting up a benchmark framework for urban sustainability and providing an evaluation and monitoring model for decision maker to improve the urban carrying capacity.
Highlights
Urbanization has become a hot issue in some nations, especially in China
After exploring the indicator set, consisting of several subsystems including the environment, resources, infrastructure, ecological civilization, urban security, public service, science and technology, and social culture, we developed an evaluation model which is consists of dynamic indictor system according to the principles of the law of the minimum and compensation effects and an evaluation model through the entire array method to monitor and evaluate urban comprehensive carrying capacity
The results showed that the indicator system can be changed due to the subsystem carrying capacity changing, which suggests that decision makers may select the evaluation indictors from the indicator set according to the urban sustainable development instead of adopting the immutable indictors to evaluate the urban carrying capacity
Summary
Urbanization has become a hot issue in some nations, especially in China. Urban development has a major impact on people’s lives and on social and economic activities. The capacity of resource, environment, culture, and infrastructure reveals the urban comprehensive carrying capacity to survive [1,2], which can promote the sustainable development of urbanization [1,3]. The urban carrying capacity was described as the maximum value, which can survive in a given environment if we take into full consideration the pressure factors of resources and services with the concept of sustainable development [1,4]. Previous studies improved urban sustainable development through improving urban carrying capacity. Several problems have hampered urban sustainable development, including but not limited to traffic congestion, environmental degradation, population overload, excessive resource consumption, and low utilization efficiency, which overload the urban system [5,6].
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