International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—The idea of ‘compact urban form’ has been examined mainly in the context of developed countries, but rarely has it been studied in the case of Chinese cities. A compact city is a special urban form with inherent physical, social and institutional constraints on environmental issues that obstruct the achievement of sustainability. In this study, population density and GDP density is used as the index of compact city to investigate the impact on environmental sustainability in China. It argues that exists the spatial effect in the examination of the determinants of environment sustainability. There exists a U- shaped function on the relationship between population density and SO₂ emission when considering the spatial effect. The statistical significant inverted U-shaped curves are found in the estimation of the impact of GDP density on the pollution. It illustrates that city’s pollution will be decreased with the compact urban development.

Index Terms—Compact city, environmental sustainability, urban development.

Yuan Li-Ke is with the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development, Beijing, 100038, China (e-mail: yuanlike@126.com).

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Cite: Yuan Li-Ke, "Does Compact Urban Development Foster Environment Sustainability?," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 285-289, 2016.