Sustainable Resource-based City Planning Using Urban Ecosystem Services

Abstract

Most resource-based cities (RBC) are the result of resource-based industrialization processes, leading to a heterogeneous composition and configuration of urban areas seldom guided by proper urban planning policies. Furthermore, this urbanization has resulted in severe fragmentation of urban ecosystems and generated negative impacts to human well-being. In this paper, we put forward a novel urban planning approach using an ecosystem services perspective for achieving sustainable development in Chinese RBC. An urban ecosystem services simulation model, built using an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and expert opinion, and an urban classification model, built usingcommuting radius and geographic information system (GIS), were used to assess past urbanization and to guide the future urban planning. The results showed a rapid land use change in different sub-systems of Tangshan city from 1990 to 2010, providing relative values of each type of land per unit in three sub-systems, and detected the change of ecosystem services in three sub-systems and the change of ecosystem services per capita in the whole administrative urban area. We suggest that (a) long-term, stable, and ecosystem-services-based land use policies and urban planning approaches are needed; (b) the optimum adjustment of the human-natural relationship should be implemented into suburb for priority; and (c) highlight an urban planning approach covering economic, social, and natural dimensions for achieving sustainable development.