Sustainability assessment and key factors identification of first-tier cities in China.

Sustainability is a key issue should be considered in the process of urbanization construction. The sustainable development of cities plays an important role in increasing urbanization quality. The paper evaluated the sustainability level of 19 first-tier cities in China by selecting 18 indicators from economic, social and environmental systems. Since indicator is the basic unit of the measurement of urban sustainability, the sustainability was refined to the indicator level. Indicator sustainability was measured by the combination of its competitive and developing levels. In addition, a sustainability oriented sequential relationship analysis method was proposed to allocate more weight to the indicator with higher sustainable level. The assessment results indicate that the sustainable performances of the cities were not ideal, because only three cities, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Dongguan, had the average performances above 0.5. Besides Tianjin, all the cities showed an upward development trend in the year 2010–2018. It indicates the sustainability prospect of these cities is optimistic. It is found that economy had the strongest connection with cities' sustainability. However, most of the cities showed the worst performance on economic sustainability. Combining the phenomenon of environmental decline in some cities, it is suggested to strengthen environmental protection while giving priority to economic development so as to realize the coordinated development between economy and environment. Image 1 • This paper evaluated the sustainability of 19 first-tier cities in China. • A SO-SRA method was proposed where weight reflects indicator sustainability. • Cites' sustainability was not ideal, only 3 cities with performances above 0.5. • Nearly all cities (accounting for 94.7%) showed an optimistic development prospect. • More than half cities showed the poorest sustainability on the key factor, economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]