Indicator System Of And Empirical Study On Low-carbon City Based On City Value

This research is conducted against the background of climate change and thetransformation of human civilization, globalization and the game of international“Carbon Politics”, as well as urbanization and the “carbon management” of cities.Especially, the18th CPC National Congress put forward the overall plan for promotingeconomic, political, cultural, social and ecological progress, and emphasized that weshould give high priority to making ecological progress and strive for green, circularand low-carbon development, which makes this research have greater practicalsignificance. More importantly, at Doha Climate Change Conference concluded onDecember8,2012, China pledged to reduce its carbon emissions per unit of GDP by40%to45%by2020compared to the levels in1990. This means that China willassume greater responsibility in coping with climate change and reducing carbonemissions. Such responsibility makes this research be of greater global significance.At present, China has surpassed Japan in terms of GDP, making the Chineseeconomy the world’s second largest. However, China ranks first in the world incarbon dioxide emissions, and its per capita carbon emissions have been close to orequivalent to the international level. To deal with climate change and achieve scientificdevelopment, China is indeed facing very big challenges.“The long-term growthmodel of high investment, high consumption, high pollution and low efficiency cannotcontinue. The development cannot be sustainable if we do not accelerate thetransformation of economic development model and the adjustment of economicstructure.”(Li Keqiang,2012). Currently, China’s urbanization is entering a periodof accelerated development and critical growth. China must take the path of socialistmodernization with Chinese characteristics instead of following the traditionaldevelopment model of developed countries. Whether can China achieve low-carbondevelopment when its per capita GDP is half of developed countries or even lower?This primarily depends on the development model of urbanization that we choose.This paper argues that vigorously developing low-carbon cities under theguidance of the concept of ecological civilization will be the only way for humanbeings to find a way out of crisis and enter the road to sustainable health and happiness. The construction of low-carbon cities is the inevitable choice for China’s newurbanization. Therefore, this subject is conducted on the basis of the theory of urbanvalue chain, the practice and guidance of low-carbon cities’ construction, and theorientation of urban value. In addition, through the analysis on the core elementswhich influence the construction of low-carbon cities, this subject establishes anindicator system for evaluating the level of the development of China’s low-carboncities, which consists of five first-level indicators (including economic support, socialprogress, resource bearing, environmental protection, and quality of life) together with30second-level indicators. This subject selects China’s35provincial andsub-provincial cities as the sample for evaluation, and makes innovation andmodification of AHR evaluation method to carry out comprehensive assessment andanalysis on the35sample cities. Then, this subject proposes a roadmap for thedevelopment of low-carbon cities, which involves low-carbon strategies, planning,industries, culture and management. That means to determine the goal of urbandevelopment based on low-carbon strategies, optimize the functions of urbandevelopment through low-carbon planning, transform the model of urban developmentby low-carbon industries, pool the power of urban development based on low-carbonculture, and create the model of urban governance through low-carbon management. Indoing so, we can include the comprehensive development of industrialization,urbanization, informatization and agricultural modernization in the construction ofecological civilization, establish a long-term mechanism for the development oflow-carbon cities, and fully achieve the maximization of urban value under theframework of ecological civilization.