Sustainable Development of New Urbanization from the Perspective of Coordination: A New Complex System of Urbanization‒Technology Innovation and the Atmospheric Environment

Abstract

Exploring the coordinated development of urbanization (U), technology innovation (T), and the atmospheric environment (A) is an important way to realize the sustainable development of new-type urbanization in China. Compared with existing research, we developed an integrated index system that accurately represents the overall effect of the three subsystems of UTA, and a new weight determination method, the structure entropy weight (SEW), was introduced. Then, we constructed a coordinated development index (CDI) of UTA to measure the level of sustainability of new-type urbanization. This study also analyzed trends observed in UTA for 11 cities in Zhejiang Province of China, using statistical panel data collected from 2006 to 2017. The results showed that: (1) urbanization efficiency, the benefits of technological innovation, and air quality weigh the most in the indicator systems, which indicates that they are key factors in the behavior of UTA. The subsystem scores of the 11 cities show regional differences to some extent. (2) Comparing the coordination level of UTA subsystems, we found that the order is: coordination degree of UT > coordination degree of UA > coordination degree of TA. This suggests that the atmospheric environment system improvement is an important strategic decision for sustainable urbanization in Zhejiang. (3) The UTACDI values of the 11 cities are not high enough, as the coordination is mainly low, basic, or good, while none of the cities reached the stage of excellent coordination. (4) Gray Model (1,1) revealed that the time taking to achieve excellent coordination varies for different cities. Hangzhou and Ningbo were predicted to reach the excellent coordination level in 2018. Other cities are predicted to take 2–4 years to adjust their urbanization strategies enough to be considered to have excellent coordination of their UTA system.

Investigating the Relationship between the Industrial Structure and Atmospheric Environment by an Integrated System: A Case Study of Zhejiang, China

“…Because of the fast-growing nature of the economy and industrialization, the resource consumption and environmental destruction are inevitably intensified [30]. For instance, the emission of air pollutants is increasing [28,29] and the air pollution reduction situation is grim. Figure 1 shows the data of industry structure and waste gas discharged for Zhejiang province from 1990 to 2017.…”

“…In order to eliminate the influences of different indicators' magnitudes, dimensions, and characters, the data were normalized by Equations (1) and (2) [4,26,28].…”

“…Referring to previous research results [26,28] and combining the principles of scientificity, systematization, integrity, and accessibility of indicator variables, we finally built the integrated indicator system in Tables 1 and 2, below. Compared with the existing study [4], which only included industrial output and industrial investment in the industrial system, we comprehensively considered the content of three dimensions of industrial structure-level, quality, and innovation (LQI)-and 12 indicators were screened out ( Table 1).…”

“…In order to overcome the informational overlap between multiple index variables and the subjectivity of artificial weight determination, we adopted the Structure Entropy Weight (SEW) method and the Mean Squared Deviation (MSD) method to analyze the indicators' comprehensive weights. The basic principle of the SEW method was to rank the importance degree of each indicator and then use the entropy method to quantitatively analyze the uncertainty of the typical order [28,[39][40][41]. The MSD method, an objective weighting method, determined the weight according to the relative dispersion degree of the attribute value of each evaluation index [26,42,43].…”

“…Thus, it was difficult to systematically reveal the complex influence of industrial structure evolution on the environmental system; (2) Increasing studies have centered on the relationship between industrial structure and carbon dioxide emission [9][10][11]14,18,24], as well as the relationship between industrial structure and the ecological environment system [4,23], but there is a lack of detailed study on the dimension of the air environment system. On the basis of the pressure-state-response model, it was gradually pursued by scholars to treat the air environment as a whole system from the system theory [25][26][27][28]. Meanwhile, strengthening environmental regulation, reducing air pollution emission, and improving air quality are the unswerving goals of urban air environment governance in China.…”