麦肯锡中国城市可持续发展报告(15)

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The Urban China Initiative

Geographic patterns

Are cities in different regions across China at clearly different levels of sustainability? In 2011, there was a distinct correlation between a city’s level of sustainability and its geographic location. In eastern China, 72 cities performed in the top quintile of

sustainability, with a high percentage of cities performing very well. They were followed by 61 cities in central China – most of them in the upper middle section of the rankings. 52 western cities came last, with a majority of poor performers dragging the overall result down.

We have been able to observe huge differences in every region based on an in-depth study of the economy, society, resources and the environment. Eastern cities scored the highest in resources, but the lowest in social development. Central cities scored the highest in resources, but the lowest in economy. Western cities performed best in social development, but the worst in resources. Despite a low overall score, central China

and western China were relatively close in social development performance to those in eastern China (Figure 7).

Moreover, the central region improved the most, while the western region demonstrated the least improvement. These results were arrived at by comparing regional changes during the period 2008-2011: despite the fact that the three regions retained the same

ranking, the central region slowly caught up with the eastern region, and the gap between the western and central regions widened.

Of the 24 clusters studied, Pearl River Delta, Yangzi River Delta and Shandong Byland emerged with a clear advantage over all the others in 2011. These top-performers scored around 75, while the others scored 60 or below. Despite the size of their economy,

Jianghuai, Poyang Lake and Ha-Qi improved more than the other clusters over the period 2008-2011. Their rate of sustainable growth rose at a rate of approximately 5%, while the other clusters climbed at a rate of 4%, or lower. Five clusters are listed in the top 10 in both overall sustainability level and improvement rankings, namely Pearl River Delta, Chengdu, Poyang Lake, Jianghuai and Ha-Qi (Figure 8).