Abstract
The economic, social, environmental, and physical processes are often interlinked, with complex trade-offs and synergies, especially in the process of urbanization. After experiencing rapid urbanization with remarkable economic growth, many countries have suffered from the negative externalities and impacts of urbanization. Globally, some researchers, such as Marx, Lefebvre and Harvey, have shown their critical attitudes towards unjust processes and undesirable outcomes of urbanization in the context of capitalism. In China, along with the remarkably high-speed urbanization, the expanding urban-rural inequality and growing environmental emissions echo such unsustainable processes and outcomes as well. In this regard, the goals of high-quality development and sustainable urbanization have been increasingly emphasized. These are the very desirable and optimal development modes, with limited resources and increasing human needs. On top of this, analyses on not only processes and problems of urbanization, but also interactions between urbanization and either distributional or environmental issues are important for both academic urban studies and practical policy-making in the worldwide and particularly in China.The term, sustainability, usually refers to a particular coordinated and harmonious relationship between human and natural systems – one that ensures meeting human needs in the long run. Urban sustainability often denotes the level or status of sustainable development in the urban area. Its key characteristics include intergenerational and intragenerational equity, protection of the natural environment, minimal use of nonrenewable resources, economic vitality and diversity, community self-reliance, individual well-being, and satisfaction of basic human needs. Additionally, sustainability transition is a burgeoning field, which places more emphasis on the transformation process to become sustainable. Accordingly, to understand and promote sustainable development, apart from outcome assessment, the research on processes and evolutionary trajectories warrants and has raised growing attention. In this sense, not only efficiency but also equity and eco-environment need to be taken into consideration, and the balance between them is ultimately pursued. On the other hand, in practice, it is increasingly widely acknowledged that due to the high-speed economic growth and profound changes in both economic and social structure, the challenge of sustainable development in China is the most difficult and complex around the world. Under this circumstance, the Chinese central government has proposed the mode of high-quality development and the development path of sustainable urbanization. Taking the leading part, governments in China share the common goal of pursuing a more comprehensive transformation from the rural to the urban. In this context, the notion of new-type urbanization is defined to be people-oriented and further developed in an iterative manner within related policy-making, with the final goal and pursuit of intensive and efficient, fair and inclusive, and ecologically livable environments. Therefore, investigating the interactions between urbanization, income distribution and environmental change in China provides extensions to the existing sustainability theory with Chinese characteristics, and also is of great practical significance in terms of elucidating the role of institutional factors in sustainability transition and offering reference to urban governance in other developing countries.
Notwithstanding several previous studies have concentrated on part of such nexus and the possible mechanisms involved, a relatively holistic analysis is lacking. Furthermore, a dearth of sustainability research investigates the process of pursuing sustainable urbanization. Importantly, the role of government intervention and policies in the transition towards urban sustainability and sustainable urbanization has been paid insufficient attention so far. Thus, to fill in these gaps, this thesis endeavors to apply and extend the analysis of sustainability transition to the urbanization process. It investigates not only the decoupling but also the bi-directional and dual effects between urbanization and either income distribution or environmental change with both theoretical deductions and empirical evidence. It further probes into the interplay and trade-offs in the urbanization-inequality-emission system, with the special focus on transition processes and institutional roles. These explorations contribute to a better understanding of the process and future of urban development and governance, which also help propose specific solutions to the promotion of sustainable urbanization, particularly in the context of China.
To bridge the research gap and integrate the fragmented knowledge, methodological pluralism is adopted in this thesis. This study not only describes the process of sustainable urbanization (in terms of changes in the decoupling) in the global and Chinese contexts, but also theoretically deduces the interactive effects and further empirically explores the influencing mechanisms embedded in China's urbanization-inequality-emission system. More specifically, it conducts the mixed method of qualitative analysis and majorly quantitative analysis for research. On the one hand, systematic review of relevant literature and empirical analysis (i.e., curve fitting and decoupling analysis) of macroeconomic data are used to depict the sustainability transition in the process of urbanization and also assess the urban sustainability across global countries and Chinese provinces. On the other hand, content analysis of policy documents and empirical analysis (i.e., curve fitting and regression analysis) are applied to capture and discuss the interactions between urbanization, urban-rural income inequality and environmental emissions in China. Moreover, heterogeneity analysis and mechanism analysis are utilized for more targeted practical implications. The theoretical deductions are developed based on social welfare functions and general equilibrium models, while the empirical models consist of a string of regression models and techniques majorly including panel models, Difference-in-Difference-in-Difference (DDD) models and mediating effect models. To sum up, the combined application of decoupling analysis and sustainability analysis, and the deduction of sustainable social welfare functions for investigating transitions towards sustainable urbanization are the major methodological contributions of this study. In parallel, the conceptual analytical framework of this thesis is established with the theoretical basis concerning sustainability transition, decoupling analysis and institutional roles. With critical thinking, the reconsideration, applications and integrations of sustainability transition theory, decoupling theory and institutional theory are the innovative and notable attempts to examine and develop them in the domain of urban studies and particularly in the context of the developing world.
The results are first concerned with the transition towards sustainable urbanization and the status of urban sustainability, with equity and environmental considerations. At both the global and Chinese provincial levels, the increasingly prevalent tendency of urbanization-inequality and urbanization-emission decoupling unearths the achievements of sustainable development goals and sustainability transition. More specifically, the urbanization-inequality decoupling is more widely-observed in the developing world, whilst the urbanization-emission decoupling emerges in more developed countries. Correspondingly, the better performance in realizing the urbanization-inequality decoupling is unveiled across Chinese provinces. Although they develop with various characteristics and in different paths, the crucial and leading role of government intervention and policies in accelerating the decoupling is verified (articulated in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5). Furthermore, regulatory instruments, in terms of either urban-biased fiscal expenditure or fiscal support for eco-environmental improvement, play a crucial role in mediating the effects of urbanization on urban-rural inequality and environmental emissions (elaborated in Chapter 5). In turn, the promotion of transition towards sustainable urbanization can benefit from the growing policy considerations about equity issues, and the implementation of specific environmental regulations such as pollution rights trading (PRT) and carbon emission trading (CET) schemes. To achieve this, an increase in the fiscal support for urban-rural integration, the green transformation of labor-intensive industry, and particularly the improvements on both road areas and urban energy supply are the efficient channels (specified in Chapter 6). Apart from such pivotal roles, to strike a balance between urbanization and either inequality reduction or emission mitigation, the observed trade-offs and interplay are worthy of attention and consideration (discussed in Chapter 7). These findings provide support and extensions to the understanding of sustainability transition, urban sustainability, urban governance and institutional power, with evidence majorly from the developing world.
This thesis makes significant contributions to both the theoretical development concerning connotations of sustainable urbanization, and empirical investigations of transitions towards sustainable urbanization particularly in the Chinese context. From a macro perspective, it decomposes sustainable urbanization as the urbanization-inequality-emission interactions by analyzing not only the effects of urbanization on income distribution and eco-environment, but also the impacts of equity and environmental policy considerations on urbanization. Within a relatively holistic analytical framework, both theoretical deductions and empirical findings are of reference significance for relevant research. Through linking sustainability theory with decoupling theory, and constructing social welfare functions for sustainable urbanization to investigate the institutional parts involved, this thesis makes some theoretical contributions and provides some generalized insights into the analysis of sustainable urbanization. Moreover, relevant policy assessment and decoupling analysis are of great practical importance in this domain. Empirically, from the perspectives of policy considerations, policy implementation and intervention mechanisms, the identification of the critical but heterogeneous roles of government intervention and policies in facilitating transitions towards sustainable urbanization is conducive to producing more targeted implications and efficient solutions to the desirable urban development. These help open up the black box of managing and promoting the transition towards sustainable urbanization, which meet the needs of both scholars and practitioners (such as policymakers) particularly in China. In short, this thesis pays special attention to urbanization as a critical container and component for sustainable development and sustainability transition. Beyond investigating the urbanization-inequality-emission nexus, it attempts to show the desirable process and destination of sustainable transition – to facilitate the decoupling, and well deal with the trade-offs and interplay involved with the ‘visible hand’. Relevant contributions and findings help shed light on analyses concerning not only sustainable urbanization but sustainability science as well.
| Date of Award | 20 Jul 2023 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
|
| Supervisor | Xiaoling ZHANG (Supervisor) & Yi LU (Co-supervisor) |