Comprehensive evaluation of sustainable development for different scale cities in China

Cities are complex socio- economic-natural ecosystems that have the highest concentration of people and their activities. Implementation of sustainable development is the necessary approach to urbanization. Sustainable urban development can be monitored using an indicator system that accounts for both the socio- economic development and environmental protection. We used 277 cities at prefecture level or above and a municipality directly under the central government in China as case studies to develop an indicator system for sustainable development of different scale cities that comprised 24 indicators in three themes: economic development,social progress,and eco-environmental protection. The capacity for sustainable development of the 277 cities from 2000 to 2010 was evaluated using the full permutation polygon synthetic indicator method. The comparison among different scale cities showed that the larger the city scale,the higher the levels of economic development and social progress and the better the comprehensive capacity for sustainable development,but the worse the level of eco-environmental protection. Concurrently,the overall level of the eco-environmental protection was the worst of the three categories for all city scales. The cities clearly did not observe the same degree of resource conservation and environmental protection as they did for economic development and social progress. This was a common problem that different scale cities faced during the urbanization in the past 10 years. Furthermore,the comparison within different scale cities from 2000 to 2010 revealed that the indicator values for economic development,social progress,and eco-environmental protection of different scale cities increased significantly in the same period. Similarly, the comprehensive capacity for sustainable development of different scale cities also increased. Additionally,during the 10-year period,the megalopolises had the greatest increase in eco-environmental protection,whereas the large cities had the greatest increase in social progress. The small or medium-sized cities experienced the greatest increase in economic development and comprehensive sustainability capacity. These results indicated that the increase in city scale decreases the potential to improve comprehensive capacity for sustainable development. Therefore, China should focus more on promoting the development of small and medium-sized cities. However,by 2010,the indicator values for comprehensive c