The impact of urban compactness on urban sustainable development in China: The case of Nanjing

Abstract

How China's city development takes the course of urban sprawl or urban compactness depends on how urban compactness affects urban sustainable development. Using the vector autoregression (VAR) model, this paper estimates the impact of urban compactness on the urban sustainable development of Nanjing in China during 2005-2015. The results of impulse response analysis show that the responses of social development levels continue to decline after shocks from population compactness and ecological environment coordination, the responses of economic development levels following shocks from public service and ecological environment coordination continue to increase at different speeds, and the responses of ecological environment level keep a slight upward trend following shocks from economic compactness. Moreover, the variance decomposition results demonstrate that most of social development is explained by its own shock, the economic development explained its largest variations, and the contribution from the ecological environment compactness first increases and then decreases.

Keeping mass tourism destinations sustainable via urban design: The case of Benidorm

“…Encouraging vertical urban growth by building skyscrapers surrounded by open spaces in certain stretches of the coast has been recognized as an efficient land occupation strategy (Martí, Nolasco-Cirugeda, & Serrano-Estrada, 2018). In fact, Benidorm has the highest rate of skyscrapers per capita in Spain, indicating the city's high urban compactness (Skyscraper Source Media Inc., 2018) and affecting positively to urban sustainable development (Tan & Lu, 2019). Thus, Benidorm is considered the paradigm for coastal mass tourism in a sustainable urban environment (Fernández-Galiano, 2002;Iribas, 2000;Ivars i Baidal et al, 2013;Rebollo & Castiñeira, 2010;Vera & Ivars, 2003).…”

Health benefits of compact cities for Chinese older adults: Nation-level study of Chinese cities

“…To combine the seven factors into a single UCI, we use the entropy weight method, 6 which has been widely used to evaluate urban compactness/sprawl (Abdullahi and Pradhan, 2017; Shi et al, 2016; Tan and Lu, 2019). The value of the UCI is between 0 and 1; a higher UCI indicates higher compactness.…”

Smart age-friendly city in the context of seasonal migration of senior residents. The case of Benidorm

“…Nevertheless, lively, diverse and friendly spaces have been created between the buildings, and from the strict structure of the city, one can enjoy beautiful views of the sea from the upper floors of the buildings, thanks to the vertical construction. In fact, Benidorm has the highest per capita rate of skyscrapers in Spain, indicating the high density of the city (Skyscraper Source Media Inc., 2018) and positively influencing the sustainable development of cities (Tan & Lu, 2019). The results of the research from 2020 (Nolasco-Cirugeda et al, 2020) suggest that the city's land management strategy (vertical building), the design of diverse public spaces, and the diverse leisure and accommodation offer have a beneficial effect on the optimization of the city's resources, creating a successful tourist destination.…”