How to build an eco-efficient city? Cases studies in Chinese urbanization over the past 20 years

Abstract

• We propose a hybrid model to estimate city eco-efficiency and TGR, and investigate the relationship between growth and city eco-efficiency. • TGR plays a vital role in city growth patterns and China's inter-region imbalances. • City growth patterns show homogeneous within a region and heterogeneous between regions. • China's urbanization needs governments’ intervention. • Policy-makers policy-executors should pay more attention to the linkage between eco-city and city characteristics. This paper investigates disparities in the technological gap ratio (TGR) between regionally-grouped cities and the effects of urban growth on city eco-efficiency measured using eco-efficiency and TGR estimations, by applying a hybrid model to data from 30 provincial cities in China from 2000 to 2017. Estimates show that overall city eco-efficiency in China is low, although city eco-efficiency and TGR differ greatly between regions. Meanwhile, results illustrate that TGR plays a crucial role in imbalances between China's regions, by inherently affecting city growth patterns and eco-efficiency. Importantly, the patterns of city growth are homogenous within each region and heterogeneous between regions. Furthermore, results certify that policies from China's central government positively affect city eco-efficiency, but aggravate inter-region imbalances. Therefore, the findings suggest that China's eco-city building needs guidance from the central government, and that policy-makers and policy-executors should pay more attention to linkages between city TGR and development when seeking to build an eco-city in China.