Taking the pulse of urban economy: From the perspective of systems ecology

Abstract

Pulsing paradigm is regarded general for all scales of ecosystem. The pulsing succession view insists that a resource-dependent system will approach its peak through intensive consumption of resources, then move towards recession and get ready for the next cycle. Urban economy, as an open and resource-dependent subsystem in the whole ecosystem may pulse, and its quantitative growth in physical scale will be limited by the finite ecosystem eventually. This raises one problem: what would be the future of urban economy when it gets to the physical climax under the ecological constraint? Modelling is a feasible approach to simulate and reveal the pulse of a large scale system whose wave length is too long for individuals to witness. In this study, systems ecology-modelling, as a combination of ecological modelling and theories of systems ecology, is applied to take the pulse of urban economy. Cosmic emergy is applied to synthesize the material, energy, information, currency and population flows and stocks, which greatly facilitates and simplifies the simulation. Taking Beijing city as a case, the systems ecology-modelling is carried out, and the pulses of Beijing's economy and its components are partly observed. Suggestions on urban management are proposed accordingly.