Greenspace is an important part of complex urban ecosystems and provides significant ecosystem services. It benefits urban communities environmentally, esthetically, recreationally and economically. Beijing Province is in north of China, and has a total area of 16,807.8 km 2 and a population of about 13.8 million. This paper aims to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework for urban greening of Beijing Province based on landscape ecological principles. It attempts to answer how to establish an urban greening plan at the regional, city and neighborhood levels to achieve long-term sustainability. At the regional level, a big natural and semi-natural forest area in the northwest and an ecological buffer belt in the southeast are planned to protect the environmental quality of Beijing and provide habitats for wildlife. At the city level, a green network system of green wedges, parks and green corridors has been proposed. This green network helps to limit future urban expansion, improve urban environmental quality and serve as habitats and migration routes for wildlife. At the neighborhood level, green extensions and connections of riverside greenway, road greenway, parks and vertical greening permeate into the built-up areas. They provide open space close to residential areas and offer places for recreation. This three-level green system constitutes an integrated ecological network for urban sustainable development of Beijing. For future development of Beijing, urban parks, forestry, agriculture, water and infrastructure should be planned and designed in an integrated way. After this greenspace plan is legislated and completely realized, Beijing will develop an interconnected and integrated network of urban greenspaces. It has the prospect of achieving the aim of "Green Olympic City 2008" and the long-term goal of developing Beijing towards an "Eco-City".

a b s t r a c tCities are complex ecosystems affected by social, economic, environmental, and cultural factors. The problem of attaining urban sustainable development is thus an important challenge. The development of evaluation indicators and a method for assessing the status of urban sustainable development will be required to support urban ecological planning, construction, and management. By using Jining City in China's Shandong Province as a case study, the authors developed a system of 52 indicators of urban sustainable development that address economic growth and efficiency, ecological and infrastructural construction, environmental protection, social and welfare progress. The authors developed a Full Permutation Polygon Synthetic Indicator method to evaluate the capacity for urban sustainable development at different times during the next two decades. The results of our research indicate that the value of a synthetic indicator for sustainable development of Jining City was 0.24 in 2004, which indicates a low level of sustainable development. According to the ecological planning of Jining City (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018)(2019)(2020), the indicator will improve to 0.45 in 2007 and 0.62 in 2010, indicating significant improvements in sustainable development, and will reach 0.90 in 2020, indicating excellent potential for sustainable development. The Full Permutation Polygon Synthetic Indicator method provides a comprehensive, intuitive approach that reflects the system integration principle that the whole can be more than the sum of its parts. The approach thus provides a promising basis for decision-making to support urban sustainable development and monitoring of the effectiveness of these decisions.

No abstract