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Construction industries have significant impacts on the economy, society and environment. To transform construction industry towards sustainability, construction enterprises' perceptions and performance on sustainability needs to be understood and evaluated, which has not be fully explored by existing studies. This paper holistically examines the Chinese construction enterprises’ attitude towards and performance on various aspects of sustainability (e.g. the economic, social and environmental aspects) in order to identify those aspects the firms perceive to be the most and least important and those aspects the firms perform best and worst on. The associations among the sustainability attitude, sustainability performance, and firm size are also explored. The findings show that quality management and customer service are perceived as the most important as well as the best-performed aspects by the firms while supporting community development is the least important and worst-performed aspect. Sustainability attitude is positively correlated with performance, and larger firms tend to have better sustainability performance than that of small ones. However, larger construction firms do not necessarily perceive sustainability more important. This study provides a useful reference for policy makers and researchers to understand how sustainability is perceived and implemented by the Chinese construction firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the global climate change and the rapid progress of urbanization, the frequent occurrence of flooding disasters and non-point source pollution seriously threaten the sustainable development of modern cities. To alleviate these problems, China started to pilot construction of the "Sponge City" (SPC). Over a decade, it has attracted public attention, supports, and participations. The paper presents a literature review of sponge city construction (SPCC) process (planning, design and construction) as well as the assessment of SPC, including: operation, maintenance, and effectiveness. Research gap and future works are also proposed. The paper offers some tactics for SPCC, including: 1) in the planning and construction stage of SPC, the goals and systematic plans should be formulated according to local water-environmental conditions. The drainage plan should cover the strategy to dispose runoff volumes at sources and the ultimately goal for flood mitigation. The drainage design involves the combination of various green and grey infrastructures; 2) It is important to identify monitoring methods and hydrological models which can be used to assess the performance of a SPC. With adequate field data, all models and methods should be calibrated for not only runoff quantity and quality control but also the alleviation of urban heat island effects, including the base flows and local groundwater table; 3) Based on the regional field data, it is necessary to standardize regional design parameters, construction material specifics, and maintenance scheme and schedule that would significantly affect the facility's infiltrating and filtering processes, therefore, a regular maintenance program should be initiated to monitor the operations of the as-built facilities according to local climate conditions. The paper evaluated several maintenance methods for ten typical facilities to provide a reference for the operation and maintenance of facilities in SPCC. • The sponge city construction (SPCC) and design methods were introduced in detail. • Scientific and reasonable assessment can better guide the SPCCs. • The sponge city (SPC) facilities can be a better way to control stormwater runoff. • Monitoring and simulation method are equally important for assessing SPC effect. • A maintenance program should be initiated to monitor the operations of SPC facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Introducing a hierarchical structure of Resource-based Cities' Carrying Capacity Index. • Proposing an integrated method to compare the carrying capacity among cities. • Revealing the cause of the carrying capacity difference among resource-based cities. • Providing a new perspective and guideline to formulate sustainable development policies. Comprehensive carrying capacity is an important indicator for measuring the sustainable development of mineral resource-based cities and an important tool for the government to formulate relevant policies. Further investigation of the carrying capacities of mineral resource-based cities would contribute towards the cities' sustainable development. In this paper, we propose a novel R-type clustering analysis-technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution-rank sum ratio (RCA-TOPSIS-RSR) methodology and construct a composite mineral resource-based cities' carrying capacity index (MRCCCI) to evaluate the carrying capacities of 41 mineral resource-based cities. First, for better benchmarking and sustainable development policy formulation, the comprehensive evaluation of urban carrying capacity needs to fully consider the synergy between the economic, social, resource, and environmental sub-dimensions. Therefore, through indicator reduction, we obtained a final carrying capacity indicator system with 25 indicators in 5 dimensions (such as green coverage ratio of built-up areas, wastewater treatment rate, etc.). Second, we evaluated the comprehensive carrying capacity level and analyzed its influencing factors for each mineral resource-based city from 2010 to 2016. The results showed that the limiting factor of the comprehensive carrying capacity of each mineral resource-based city is different from the others. Further, cities with the same level of carrying capacity may be significantly different in the limiting factor. Finally, based on the level of comprehensive carrying capacity and sub-dimension equilibrium, we divided 41 mineral resource-based cities into four categories. The results showed that there is only one city with high carrying capacity and high equilibrium, and most of the cities are low carrying capacity and low equilibrium; this indicates that the sustainable development of most of China's mineral resource-based cities is facing severe challenges. Based on these findings, we put forward countermeasures and suggestions to improve the carrying capacities of mineral resource-based cities and to promote the sustainable development of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]