The evaluation of urban comprehensive carrying capacity (UCC) is of great importance in maintaining urban socio-economic sustainable development. However, UCC is still in its nascent period with limited applications and a lack of credible assessment methods. To enrich this field, this study constructed an objective scientific index to evaluate the UCC of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region from a four-dimensional perspective, examining economy, society, environmental, and transportation subsystems. The improved entropy method based on 18 weighted indicators was used to measure the UCC of the 26 cities of the YRD for the period 1990-2018. Results indicate that nine cities were overloaded in 2018, meaning comprehensive carrying capacity demand exceeds supply, and the other seventeen were in loadable condition, meaning such demand did not exceed supply; the social and transportation subsystems are the most important because their index weights and UCC levels are higher than the other two subsystems; the overall UCC for all cities in the YRD is at a medium level, and there are large disparities between the various cities. The empirical results imply that the government should take effective measures to improve UCC in these cities, combining cities' specific advantages to enhance the efficiency of resource allocation and utilization and improve carrying capacities, and changing the mode of economic development. Based on UCC levels, it is also important to improve environmental conditions and coordination and integration in the development of urbanization. Policy implications on improving UCC have been highlighted in the final section.
This paper describes a GIS-based spatial analysis method that combines qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis to characterize land-use patterns and predict the trend of future land-use changes in Haizhu District of Guangzhou City, China. Spatial technique is introduced to manage land-use data and derive information of land-use changes. Through the case study for the selected area, it is demonstrated that the method and technique introduced in the paper can be effectively utilized for the analysis of urban land-use changes. Based upon this analysis, the paper also provides discussions and recommendation on urban land-use planning, urban planning and land management. Both land-use maps of Haizhu District of Guangzhou in 1995 and 1997 and the remote sensing images of 1999 are utilized in the current research. It is convenient to get various statistic data and to combine attribute data with spatial data so as to analyze land-use changes in a geographic context, which is especially suitable for the need of urban construction department, urban management department and urban planning department.
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