Estimation of eco‐efficiency and identification of its influencing factors in China's Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 792-808
Author(s):  
Xinlin Zhang
Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 495
Author(s):  
Daizhong Tang ◽  
Mengyuan Mao ◽  
Jiangang Shi ◽  
Wenwen Hua

This paper conducts an analytical study on the urban-rural coordinated development (URCD) in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRDUA), and uses data from 2000–2015 of 27 central cities to study the spatial and temporal evolution patterns of URCD and to discover the influencing factors and driving forces behind it through PCA, ESDA and spatial regression models. It reveals that URCD of the YRDUA shows an obvious club convergence phenomenon during the research duration. The regions with high-level URCD gather mainly in the central part of the urban agglomeration, while the remaining regions mostly have low-level URCD, reflecting the regional aggregation phenomenon of spatial divergence. At the same time, we split URCD into efficiency and equity: urban-rural efficient development (URED) also exhibits similar spatiotemporal evolution patterns, but the patterns of urban-rural balanced development (URBD) show some variability. Finally, by analyzing the driving forces in major years during 2000–2015, it can be concluded that: (i) In recent years, influencing factors such as government financial input and consumption no longer play the main driving role. (ii) Influencing factors such as industrialization degree, fixed asset investment and foreign investment even limit URCD in some years. The above results also show that the government should redesign at the system level to give full play to the contributing factors depending on the actual state of development in different regions and promote the coordinated development of urban and rural areas. The results of this study show that the idea of measuring URCD from two dimensions of efficiency and equity is practical and feasible, and the spatial econometric model can reveal the spatial distribution heterogeneity and time evolution characteristics of regional development, which can provide useful insights for urban-rural integration development of other countries and regions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 7872
Author(s):  
Yijia Huang ◽  
Jiaqi Zhang ◽  
Jinqun Wu

Rapid urbanization has led to a growing number of environmental challenges in large parts of China, where the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomerations serve as a typical example. To evaluate the relationship between environmental sustainability gaps and urbanization in 26 cities of the YRD, this study revisited the environmental sustainability assessment (ESA) by combining the metrics of environmental footprints and planetary boundaries at the city level, and then integrated the footprint-boundary ESA framework into decoupling analysis. The results demonstrated considerable spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the environmental sustainability of water use, land use, carbon emissions, nitrogen emissions, phosphorus emissions and PM2.5 emissions across the YRD cities during the study period 2007–2017. Decoupling analysis revealed a positive sign that more than half of the 26 cities had achieved the decoupling of each category of environmental sustainability gaps from urbanization since 2014, especially for nitrogen and phosphorus emissions. On the basis of ESA and decoupling analysis, all the cities were categorized into six patterns, for which the optimal pathways towards sustainable development were discussed in depth. Our study will assist policy makers in formulating more tangible and differentiated policies to achieve decoupling between environmental sustainability gaps and urbanization.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 4156
Author(s):  
Yiyang Sun ◽  
Guolin Hou ◽  
Zhenfang Huang ◽  
Yi Zhong

On the background of climate change, studying tourism eco-efficiency of cities is of great significance to promote the green development of tourism. Based on the panel data of the three major urban agglomerations in China’s Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region from 2008 to 2017, this paper constructed an evaluation index system and measured the tourism eco-efficiency of 63 cities by using a hybrid distance model called Super-EBM (epsilon-based measure). We compared the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of tourism eco-efficiency in the three urban agglomerations. Furthermore, the internal factors influencing tourism eco-efficiency were explored through input–output redundancy, and the external factors were analyzed by a panel regression model. The results indicate that the tourism eco-efficiency of the three urban agglomerations in China generally shows a decreasing-rising-declining trend. Among them, the Yangtze River Delta has the highest eco-efficiency, followed by the Pearl River Delta, and the lowest in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. Moreover, there is a certain gap within each urban agglomeration. The redundancy input of labor and capital is the main internal cause of low eco-efficiency. Among the external factors, the status of the tourism industry and the level of urbanization have a positive effect on eco-efficiency, while the level of tourism development, technological innovation and investment have a negative impact on it. In the future, we must attach great importance to the development quality and overall benefit value of the tourism industry so as to achieve green and balanced development of the three major urban agglomerations in eastern China. Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward targeted policy implications to improve the tourism eco-efficiency of cities.


Land ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Jinfeng Ma ◽  
Weifeng Li ◽  
Zhao Wang ◽  
Liang He ◽  
Lijian Han

Although urban agglomerations are vital sites for national economic development, comprehensive multidimensional investigations of their performance are lacking. Accordingly, we examined land use efficiency from multiple perspectives in two of the earliest developed and most advanced urban agglomerations in China, the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), using different metrics, including trans-regional drivers of the spatial allocation of construction land. We found that: (1) The land use efficiency of urban agglomerations was context dependent. Whereas it was higher in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region for population density per unit area of construction land than in the Yangtze River Delta region, the opposite was true for gross domestic production. Thus, a single aspect did not fully reflect the land use efficiency of urban agglomerations. (2) The land use efficiency of the two urban agglomerations was also scale dependent, and in the Yangtze River Delta region, the use of multiple metrics induced variations between aggregate and local measures. Median values for the land use efficiency of cities within an urban agglomeration were the most representative for comparative purposes. (3) The drivers of the spatial allocation of construction land were trans-regional. At the regional scale, most topographical factors were restrictive. Major regional transport networks significantly influenced the occurrence of construction land near them. Dominant cities and urban areas within each city exerted remote effects on non-dominant cities and rural areas. In principle, the median value can be considered a promising metric for assessing an urban agglomeration’s performance. We suggest that stringent management of land use in areas located along regional rail tracks/roadways may promote sustainable land use.


Land ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 106
Author(s):  
Jie Zhao ◽  
Cheng Li

A comprehensive understanding of the ecosystem services (ESs) trade-off/synergy relationships has become increasingly important for ecological management and sustainable development. This study employed the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region in China as the study area and investigated the spatiotemporal changes in three ESs, namely, carbon storage (CS), water purification (WP), and habitat quality (HQ). A trade-off/synergy degree (TSD) indicator was developed that allowed for the quantification of the trade-off/synergy intensity, and the spatial pattern of the TSD between ESs in the YRD region to be analyzed. Furthermore, a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model was used to analyze the relationship between the influencing factors and trade-offs/synergies. The results revealed that CS, WP, and HQ decreased by 0.28%, 2.49%, and 3.38%, respectively, from 2005 to 2015. The TSD indicator showed that the trade-off/synergy relationships and their magnitudes were spatially heterogeneous throughout the YRD region. The coefficients of the natural and socioeconomic factors obtained from the GWR indicated that their impacts on the trade-offs/synergies vary spatiotemporally. The impact factors had both positive and negative effects on the trade-offs/synergies. The findings of this study could improve the understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of trade-offs/synergies and their spatially heterogeneous correlations with related factors.


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