Sustainability assessment of the Yangtze River Delta Urban agglomeration in China based on stochastic simulation techniques

ABSTRACT The economy, society, and environment of the world are undergoing profound changes. Achieving sustainable development has become the common aspiration of the international communities. In recent years, sustainability issues are gaining increasing prominence for cities to formulate long-term development strategies. The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomeration, one of China’s most developed and densely populated industrial areas, has encountered environmental problems. Assessment of city sustainability of the YRD is a prominent issue in the process of urban construction. The paper used multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) framework to evaluate the sustainability level of 26 cities in the YRD by selecting 24 indicators from the economic, social, and environmental dimensions. In the weighting process, the paper proposed a new subjective and objective integrated weighting method based on stochastic simulation techniques. Relative results including pairwise priority matrix (PPM), comprehensive priority index (CPI), and the most likely ranking were obtained to reflect the superiority degree between two cities by adequate comparisons. The assessment results indicate that all the cities showed an upward trend from 2015 to 2019. Shanghai had overwhelming advantages over the other cities. The CPIs of Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, Changzhou in Jiangsu province, and Hangzhou, Ningbo, Zhoushan in Zhejiang province were above 50 in 2015 and increased to over 85 in 2019. Additionally, most cities had unbalanced development on the three dimensions. Each city should firstly pay more attention to their own weak points, and then achieve balanced development and long-term sustainability.