Abstract
Since the 20th century, the deterioration of the ecological environment around the world has challenged urban space construction. With the development of urbanization, the consumption of resources and energy has increased, the level of biodiversity has decreased, environmental pollution is approaching the critical level, and the contradiction between human habitat activity and ecological environment has become increasingly prominent. The sustainable development of urban space along with its economic and social benefits, taking into account the quality of life and ecological environment, has become a new and important subject that needs to be explored. In this study, the indices of the evaluation system for sustainable urban spatial development in regions with underdeveloped economies but rich in ecological resources are arranged in sequence through the systematic coupling analysis of collaborative evaluation information and a quantitative analysis. The influences of urban space elements on sustainable urban development are disclosed. On the basis of the generated data, an evaluation system for sustainable urban spatial development with a complete set of information is proposed. The proposed system is applicable to urban spatial development evaluation in regions in China with underdeveloped economies but rich in ecological capital. First, the basic concept of system coupling is introduced, and a coupling relationship between urban sustainable development and urban space is proposed. Second, the elements of urban space and the sustainable development in the Qin-Ba mountain area are extracted, and the precedence diagram method is used to construct a sustainable evaluation system for urban space development in the Qin-Ba mountain area. Third, the sustainable evaluation process of urban spatial development is proposed. Finally, the sustainable evaluation system for urban spatial development in the Qin-Ba mountain area is applied to evaluate the urban spatial development in Shangluo, Qin-Ling Mountains, China. The results show that, among the investigated 14 indicators, the proportion of industrial land use mainly influences sustainable urban spatial development. As for the rest of the index factors, per capita green land area and green coverage ratio of built-up areas, per capita urban construction land area, proportion of forestry area, greening rate of built-up areas, total industrial dust emission density, proportion of cultivated area, and average volume fraction of residential areas are the secondary influencing factors of sustainable urban spatial development. The evaluation system in this research is constructed with the three aspects of “green coordination”, “green development”, and “green sustainability” of sustainable urban spatial development, and it complements the evaluation contents of urban–rural ecological space coordination, land resource protection, and green development community, and so on. The conclusion of this study not only can provide a useful reference for urban spatial development planning for underdeveloped ecological capital areas of China but also can provide a theoretical basis for the management and control policy of sustainable urban spatial development.
Highlights
The deterioration of the ecological environment around the whole world has brought great challenges to the construction of human settlements since the 20th century
The average ecological footprint remains to be under an ecological surplus in the urban space of ecological capital regions, urban development has led to various problems, such as increasing resource and energy consumption, decreasing biodiversity levels, environmental pollution approaching the critical value, a mismatch between the growth of social–economic benefit and the growth of ecological environmental benefit, and contradictions between urban material spatial development and urban functions
Establishing the coupling relations between the urban spatial structure and sustainable development factors can lay a foundation for the selection of target factors and the analysis of an index set for the evaluation systems
Summary
The deterioration of the ecological environment around the whole world has brought great challenges to the construction of human settlements since the 20th century. The average ecological footprint remains to be under an ecological surplus in the urban space of ecological capital regions, urban development has led to various problems, such as increasing resource and energy consumption, decreasing biodiversity levels, environmental pollution approaching the critical value, a mismatch between the growth of social–economic benefit and the growth of ecological environmental benefit, and contradictions between urban material spatial development and urban functions. Evaluation systems for the sustainability of urban development generally lack the indices related to urban spatial construction, resulting in limitations on urban spatial development assessments. The evaluation indices of urban–rural ecological spatial collaboration, construction of urban human settlement, land resource protection, green buildings, and green development communities, among others, are lacking. An evaluation system for the sustainability of urban spatial development should be developed to realize the scientific and accurate processing of urban spatial construction assessment information
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