An empirical study of the assessment of green development in Beijing, China: Considering resource depletion, environmental damage and ecological benefits simultaneously

Urban green development (UGD) is a highly topical issue. To assess the degree of UGD, in this paper, we use the driving forces, pressures, states, impacts, and responses (DPSIR) model to evaluate UGD with a collection of 40 indicators based on the three aspects of resource depletion, environmental damage and ecological benefits. The established system of indicators is then applied to evaluate the UGD in Beijing from 2000 to 2014 as a case study. The results demonstrate that it is essential to analyze the trend in the change in resource depletion, which had a high weight of 0.556 because environmental damage and ecological benefits partly changed in response to this driving force and pressure. However, the UGD index value of environmental damage (positive index) has decreased since 2010. By ranking the degree of correlation among indicators, it can be seen that UGD is highly related to the lifestyle, status quo, technology and education, industrialization, environmental quality, and ecological environment of a city. The health situation in Beijing has improved in the past 15 years; it was determined to be very unhealthy (75% at the very unhealthy level (V) and 9% at the very healthy level (I)) in 2000 but very healthy (8% at the very unhealthy level (V) and 60% at the very healthy level (I)) in 2014. However, there are internal problems due to imbalanced development in Beijing related to aspects such as the ecological environment, population and economy, social life, investment management, energy consumption and urban infrastructure. And government should adjust the energy structure, formulate detailed plans and policies on urban environment, and increase investment in education and business development.