Search

Input-output analysis has been proven to be a powerful instrument for estimating embodied (direct plus indirect) energy usage through economic sectors. Using 9 economic input-output tables of years 1987, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2005, and 2007, this paper analyzes energy flows for the entire city of Beijing and its 30 economic sectors, respectively. Results show that the embodied energy consumption of Beijing increased from 38.85 million tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce) to 206.2 Mtce over the past twenty years of rapid urbanization; the share of indirect energy consumption in total energy consumption increased from 48% to 76%, suggesting the transition of Beijing from a production-based and manufacturing-dominated economy to a consumption-based and service-dominated economy. Real estate development has shown to be a major driving factor of the growth in indirect energy consumption. The boom and bust of construction activities have been strongly correlated with the increase and decrease of system-side indirect energy consumption. Traditional heavy industries remain the most energy-intensive sectors in the economy. However, the transportation and service sectors have contributed most to the rapid increase in overall energy consumption. The analyses in this paper demonstrate that a system-wide approach such as that based on input-output model can be a useful tool for robust energy policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Urban containment policies, including urban growth boundaries, urban service boundaries and greenbelts, have been extensively discussed worldwide for managing urban growth. This paper focuses on the issues associated with supporting an urban containment plan and its application in China using a planning support system. The background is that the urban containment plan has been enacted as a new component of the urban plan under the City Planning Law of the People’s Republic of China. In China, the accommodating or restrictive features are integrated as control factors (CFs), which include control indicators for land-use type control, urban activity control, building height control, as well as underground development control. This paper proposes an urban containment planning support system (UC-PSS) based on ArcGIS for automatically compiling the Beijing urban containment plan considering 60 control factors with various control indicators. The compiled plan was also applied for reviewing urban master and district detail plans in Beijing supported by the UC-PSS. The effectiveness of UC-PSS was comprehensively evaluated from the perspectives of planning compilation and planning review via interviewing urban containment planners (main users of the UC-PSS) in Beijing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Economic development, accompanying with environmental damage and energy depletion, becomes essential nowadays. There is a complicated and comprehensive interaction between economics, environment and energy. Understanding the operating mechanism of Energy-Environment-Economy model (3E) and its key factors is the inherent part in dealing with the issue. In this paper, we combine System Dynamics model and Geographic Information System to analyze the energy-environment-economy (3E) system both temporally and spatially, which explicitly explore the interaction of economics, energy, and environment and effects of the key influencing factors. Beijing is selected as a case study to verify our SD-GIS model. Alternative scenarios, e.g., current, technology, energy and environment scenarios are explored and compared. Simulation results shows that, current scenario is not sustainable; technology scenario is applicable to economic growth; environment scenario maintains a balanced path of development for long term stability. Policy-making insights are given based on our results and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The facilitation of regional trade has boosted the fragmentation in global supply chain, integrating the production, energy and other ecological factors across the regional boundaries by virtue of vertical specialization. The consequences of this trend on urban energy consumption are firstly analyzed by constructing multiregional input–output table and decomposing the value added export in Beijing. Energy consumption per unit of GDP in Beijing is only half of that per unit of value added after adjusting the export by virtue of decomposition techniques and Beijing displays no obvious advantages in energy usage when considering the value added processes. Energy intensive parts of production are relocated outside the metropolis by the downstream and upstream participation in global areas. The results of value added export for energy consumption reveal that the vertical specialization in this metropolis slashes the amount of energy consumption in the city but raises that in the outside. The unified framework by integration of the value added export and energy consumption in this paper could be extended to other related topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic clusters have been a central focus of current urban and regional research, policies and practices. However, a methodology to identify and analyze policy-relevant economic cluster dynamics is still not well developed. Based on input-output (I-O) data of 1987, 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2007 of Beijing, this article presents an adapted principle component analysis for identifying the evolution of local economic cluster patterns. This research addresses the changes of economic interaction of industries with complementary and common activities over time. The identified clusters provide an insight into the reality of economic development in a diversifying urban economy: the increasing importance of services and the growing interaction between service and manufacturing industries. Our method therefore provides the analysts with a better understanding of the emergence, disappearance and development of economic clusters citywide. The results could be used to assist monitoring urban economic development and designing more practical urban economic strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Although the scale and speed of China’s urban and economic transition is well acknowledged, a detailed account of the transformation of a single city’s development in this context is quite rare. This paper provides an insight into the recent dynamics of China’s capital city, Beijing. In the early 1980s, China’s transition process from a planned to a market economy started to deeply affect the urban economy of Beijing, so much so that the city is on its way to become one of the world’s leading cities. This article focuses on this development by looking at Beijing’s institutional context and its economic-spatial dynamics over the past 30years. Economic Clusters (ECs) are also discussed because they have contributed significantly to Beijing’s rapid growth and change. The city’s development is however under increasing pressures of ecological deterioration, limited water resources, high living costs and uncertainties regarding the future urban policy orientation of the city region. These current challenges and responses in planning are assessed and discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the mega-cities of developing countries, access to workplaces has become increasingly difficult due to dramatic rises in commuting times, reflecting both limited transport infrastructure and particular forms of metropolitan spatial planning. In the light of this, this article examines the impact of spatial planning on workers' commuting time, using the case of Beijing. The analysis, using travel data collected from 613 households in 2006, shows that workers' commuting time has a statistically significant relationship with location variables related to spatial planning, when socio-economic factors and transport provision are controlled for. Self-contained and high-density development as well as compact land use in the peripheral constellations could play a positive role in shortening workers' commuting times. At the same time, longer commuting times will result from illegal and dispersed development in green belts and outer suburban areas. The results suggest that better metropolitan spatial planning would be one efficient way of containing the dramatic growth of commuting times and congestion in central Beijing, particularly where local government has limited financial capacity to produce transport infrastructure in the context of a growing urban population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]