QUANTITATIVE DESCRIPTION OF TAIYUAN URBAN COORDINATED SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Key words: 
• Taiyuan /
• coordinated sustainable development /
• indicator system /
• quantitative description

Abstract: As the economic, political and cultural center of a nation or a region, cities are the caniers of human activities. In a sense, only cities take the path of the coordinated sustainable development, it is possible for a country or a region, even the whole world, to develop coordinately and sustainbly. Today, how to describe the urban sustainable developing level and measure the coordinated degree of environment, economy and society, has attracted more and more attentions of urban managers and researchers. City is assumed to be a big system composed by 3 subsystems of environment,economy and society, a set of indicators for urban coordinated sustainable development of Taiyuan have been designed according to the thought of coordinated sustainable development and the reality of Taiyuan development. In this indicator setthere are three levels, which can be called as target level, indicator level and statistic indicator level. Among them, target level includes three high-generalized grade-1 indicators, representing the development standard of economy, societyand environment subsystems. In this paper, according to the ideas of system theory and QIAN Xue-sen's theory ofmeta-synthesis methodology from qualitative analysis to quantitative analysis, the level, the sustainable degree and the coordinated degree of urban development were set up, which described the urban coordinated sustainable development scientifically and quantitatively. The above indicator system and the method of quantitative description were applied to Taiyuan.Through calculating, we have got the economic developing level, social developing level, environmental quality situationand the overall developing level, of Taiyuan from 198 to 1995. Also, we worked out the sustainability oftbe whole development, the respective coordinatabilities of the subsystems of economy and society, society and environment, and environment and economy, and the coordinatability of the overall development of Taiyuan in the same period of time. The coordinated sustainable development situation was quantitatively described, and the low development level was comprehensivelyanalyzed, and suggestions were raised for its future coordinated sustainable development.