Abstract
Exploring the coordinated development of urbanization (U), technology innovation (T), and the atmospheric environment (A) is an important way to realize the sustainable development of new-type urbanization in China. Compared with existing research, we developed an integrated index system that accurately represents the overall effect of the three subsystems of UTA, and a new weight determination method, the structure entropy weight (SEW), was introduced. Then, we constructed a coordinated development index (CDI) of UTA to measure the level of sustainability of new-type urbanization. This study also analyzed trends observed in UTA for 11 cities in Zhejiang Province of China, using statistical panel data collected from 2006 to 2017. The results showed that: (1) urbanization efficiency, the benefits of technological innovation, and air quality weigh the most in the indicator systems, which indicates that they are key factors in the behavior of UTA. The subsystem scores of the 11 cities show regional differences to some extent. (2) Comparing the coordination level of UTA subsystems, we found that the order is: coordination degree of UT > coordination degree of UA > coordination degree of TA. This suggests that the atmospheric environment system improvement is an important strategic decision for sustainable urbanization in Zhejiang. (3) The UTACDI values of the 11 cities are not high enough, as the coordination is mainly low, basic, or good, while none of the cities reached the stage of excellent coordination. (4) Gray Model (1,1) revealed that the time taking to achieve excellent coordination varies for different cities. Hangzhou and Ningbo were predicted to reach the excellent coordination level in 2018. Other cities are predicted to take 2–4 years to adjust their urbanization strategies enough to be considered to have excellent coordination of their UTA system.
Highlights
Sustainable progress towards new-type urbanization is an important part of the Beautiful China project [1,2]
This paper takes increasing concerns about the atmospheric environment system as a starting point to measure the sustainable development of urbanization
We investigate the three subsystems of UTA at the same level to highlight the important coordination and linking role of technological innovation in urbanization and the atmospheric environment
Summary
Sustainable progress towards new-type urbanization is an important part of the Beautiful China project [1,2]. Urbanization is one of the most significant human activities to affect regional environment and sustainable development. Urbanization sustainability assessment is a test of population agglomeration, land space use, industrial economy, social and cultural reconstruction, the development of science and technology, and eco-environmental sustainability [10,11]. The coupling of urbanization and the environment is a dynamic, multidimensional, and collaborative system. It forms a set of concepts, for instance urban social-ecological systems (USEs) [17], urbanization-resources-environment systems (UREs) [18,19], and urban population-resources-environment-economic and social development systems (PRED) [20]
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