Using Urban-Carrying Capacity as a Benchmark for Sustainable Urban Development: An Empirical Study of Beijing

Abstract

Sustainable urban development has been receiving growing concerns from both city managers and urban residents across the world. As a yardstick of sustainability, urban carrying capacity (UCC) is an important conceptual underpinning that guides local governments in promoting sustainable urban development. However, existing studies still lack consensus not only on the theoretical aspects, but also on the methodological issues for UCC monitoring and evaluation. A knowledge gap exists, which this paper fills. This study aims to develop a practical UCC assessment framework to guide urban development towards achieving sustainability. The quantitative-based assessment framework provides a set of measurable indicators and benchmarks for city managers to conduct routine monitoring on progress toward urban sustainability, and helps identify deficient areas, which urgently need resource allocation to improve UCC. Focusing on a case study of Beijing, this study demonstrates that the framework is useful in promoting urban sustainability. This framework provides rich implications for other city prototypes in China as the nation marches into the next phase of development.

A Systematic Review of Urban Sustainability Assessment Literature

“…The category economy provides a clear example. Economic growth was an underlying goal for many papers that discussed urban economies (for instance [71,91]). There is much discussion in the literature questioning if economic growth is incongruous with sustainability [100,101].…”

Do Urban Rail Transit Facilities Affect Housing Prices? Evidence from China

“…Vast price bubbles in real estate markets increase the risk of bubbles bursting, which may damage the sustainable urban development. Meanwhile, urban rail transit facilities play an important role in alleviating traffic pressures [2] and promoting sustainable urban development [3], which may expand city boundaries. Accordingly, it is of enormous interest to ask whether urban rapid rail transit affects housing prices.…”

Locating Sustainability Issues: Identification of Ecological Vulnerability in Mainland China’s Mega-Regions

“…Analyses of sustainability usually put an emphasis on the interactions between human activities and the natural environment [25]. Major themes in the sustainability literature are the analysis of the carrying capacity of the resource base and the environment at large [26], energy balances [27], and the need for coordinated development between economic growth and environmental protection [28]. It is now widely recognised that sustainability implies a balanced coordination between the natural environment on the one hand and economic and social conditions on the other hand-i.e., the now-classic "three pillars of sustainability" [28,29].…”

“…In addition, the focus on developing a "green economy" is emerging as one of the most important topics in sustainable development studies in Mainland China [45]. One key area of attention is that China's fast-paced economic development goes hand in hand with equally fast-paced urbanization, with the share of the nation's population living in cities having increased from 17.9% to 52.6% between 1978 and 2012 [46]: in order to accommodate the vast growth of economic activities, many cities in Mainland China have boomed, and this clearly poses great challenges to achieving sustainable development [26].…”

“…The spatial scale of analysis ranges from the national scale to the provincial scale [28], and also often zooms in on the urban scale [26], and sometimes even the neighbourhood scale as in a recent study of Wujin District, Changzhou City [43]. It has been argued that research on sustainable development in Mainland China speaks, to some extent, more systematically to the three pillars of sustainable development as many analyses focus on integrating ecology, sociology and economics [44].…”