Study On The Evaluation Of The Performance Of Urbanization Torwards Sustainable Development

Urbanization is intimately related to economic development, human livelihood, and profound changes in patterns of human behavior. It is aprocess in which industrial structure, people’sliving environment, land andgeographical space gradually transform to modern urban society. China is urbanizing at an unprecedented speed and two inevery three persons in China will live in urban areas by 2025. However, although urbanization can promote social and economic development, it can also cause variousproblems such as environment pollution, increase of CO2 emissions, shortage of water resources and unbalance between cities in the level of urbanization development. These problems have significant impacts on the achievement of the goal of sustainable urbanization. Therefore, it is very meaningful to achieve the overall, sustainable development of urbanization for the improvement of people’s livelihood and the sustainable development of our country. In line with these developments, governments have been taking actions, strategies to guide the practice of sustainable urbanization. It is important to understand the outcome of these actions and strategies. This paper conducts deeply and thoroughstudy into the level of sustainable urbanization development with reference to China. Methodologies adopted include theoretical analysis and empiricalstudy, static analysis and dynamic analysis, comparative analysis from the perspectives of both horizontal and vertical dimensions. The key issues addressed in this study can be highlighted as follows:Firstly, Literature review was conducted from the perspectives of connotation of urbanziaiton, evaluation indicator system, evaluation of the performance of urbanization, and the dynamic analysis of urbanization process. As a result, the gaps or the shortages of previous research are identified.Secondly, the definition of sustainable urbanization is appreciated based on the theory of sustainable development and the scientific outlook on development. This paper proposes that the performance of sustainable urbanization is embodied in the harmonious relationship between urbanization rate and other five variables, namely citizenization of peasant-workers, intensification of land use, modernization of industrial development, integration of rural-urban area, and greenization of ecological environment. As a result, the theoretical framework for this study is established.Thirdly, thisresearch examines the effectiveness of the existing indicator systems introduced in China for measuring the performance of sustainable urbanization. Nine sampleindicator systems were identified and compared. This study reveals that the existing indicator systemshave limitations for guiding sustainable urbanization practice and the differences between the variousindicator systems present barriers for their effective application.Inspired by the principle of Management by Objective(MBO) and the theoretical framework, this study introduced a responsibility-based method, named Strategic goal-Responsibility department-Response(SRR), for selecting sustainable urbanization indicators. By applying this method, indicators are selected from the perspective of responsibility ofconcerned departments. Through content analysis on the work scope and definitions of these concerned departments, those sustainable urbanization indicators which can measure the responsibilityperformance of the concerned departments are filtered out.Based on the indicators selected above, the performance of sustainable urbanization was evaluated from development and coordination dimensions. By using the method of TOPSIS, a comparison between 31 sample provinces on the performance level of sustainable urbanization was further conducted. It is demonstrated that the level of sustainable urbanization in China is nothigh, and differences are obvious between east cities and west cities. The level of sustainable urbanization of coastal provinces has proceded the level of inland provinces by 2012. The study revealed the influence factors by using coefficient of variation, and analyzed the reasons caused the differences among the provinces.This study introduced the definition of urbanization bubble to monitoring the coordinated level of urbanization. In referring to the definition of economic bubble, this study defines urbanizationbubble as a dynamic process in which urbanization rate(RU) deviates from fiveurbanization performance variables, including the level of peasant-workers’ citizenization(RPT), the level of intensification of land use(BAT), the level of modernization of industrial development(IDL), the level of integration of rural-urban area(PFL) and the level of greenization of ecological environment. Four coordinates are formed between thevelocity of urbanization rate and the velocities of the five urban performancevariables to examine the practice of urbanization in four quadrants. With referring tothe four quadrants in the four coordinates, the ratios between changes of urbanizationrate and the changes of the five urbanization performance variables are introduced tomeasure the urbanization bubbles. The coordinate method for measuring urbanizationbubble is tested through the comparison between 31 provinces in China. It reaveals that there are risks of bubbles in the process of urbanization in 31 provinces of China.Finally, counter measures and suggestions are provided based on the evaluation results for guiding urbanization towards better sustainability.