Abstract
Within the sustainable urbanization framework, two dimensions, namely, social urbanization and environmental urbanization, have complex coordinated interactions. To better understand the coordinated interaction status between the two dimensions of sustainable urbanization, an empirical study was carried out in the 14 cities of Hunan Province, China, from 2011 to 2019. This study establishes an integrated measurement framework, uses the coupling coordination degree model, information entropy weight analysis approach, and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution method to analyze the development degrees and coordinated interaction degrees of the two dimensions. The results show that the quality and efficiency of leisure facilities and water use have the greatest impacts on the coordinated interactions between the two dimensions. Besides, the development degrees of social urbanization and environmental urbanization are not consistent. What is more, the spatial noncorrelation of the coordinated interaction status demonstrates that the “high-quality development” tactics aiming to promote balanced development of dimensions among cities in China is feasible. Furthermore, corresponding suggestions are proposed, providing references for governments’ planning and decision-making processes.
Highlights
By 2014, half the world’s people were living in towns and cities, and it is predicted that 66% of the world’s population will live in urban areas till 2050 (United Nations, 2014)
This study mainly focuses on the coordinated interactions of the two dimensions of sustainable urbanization, namely, social urbanization and environmental urbanization; social urbanization refers to the social benefits and welfare to citizens during the sustainable urbanization process
The indicators with maximum contributions are as follows: per capita number of books in libraries ( x9 = 0.27504), ratio of people in endowment insurance ( x5 = 0.23235), and ratio of internet users ( x10 = 0.10813), proving that these indicators are important in determining the status of social urbanization; These results give insights to readers outside of China that the aspects of leisure and social insurance should be emphasized during the social urbanization process, and it can be learnt that local authorities can put more emphasis on the quality of the specific issues such as libraries, endowment insurance, and internet accessibility to enhance social urbanization with sustainability
Summary
By 2014, half the world’s people were living in towns and cities, and it is predicted that 66% of the world’s population will live in urban areas till 2050 (United Nations, 2014). Sustainable urbanization includes many aspects, such as maintaining biodiversity and environment, increasing social benefits, efficient use of land, developing economy, and so on (Gan et al, 2017; Jiao et al, 2018; Tan et al, 2016), and sustainable cities should be those succeeding in these dimensions. It is important for us to measure whether cities develop these dimensions harmoniously and coordinatively to enhance the effectiveness of sustainable urbanization of the cities efficiently and comprehensively. Some environment-related problems during sustainable urbanization procedure (such as resource losses and waste, desertification, and greenhouse effects) limit the further social development of cities, affect citizens’ life quality, and hinder urban sustainability; on the contrary, benign eco-environment plays a positive and attractive role in facilitating the social process of cities (Jiang et al, 2019; O’Neil, 2020). It is necessary to consider and measure the interactions between the social urbanization dimension and the environmental urbanization dimension within the sustainable urbanization framework with proper frameworks and approaches, whether these dimensions share coordinated growth and mutual common prosperity, or they are threats to each other, so that coordinated and scientific actions to enhance the mutual coordinated interactions can be taken
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