Assessing spatial-temporal evolution and key factors of urban livability in arid zone: The case study of the Loess Plateau, China

Urban livability (UL) plays an important direction of sustainable cities and society. According to the core connotation of urban sustainable development goals (SDGs), this study deconstructed the relationship between UL and SDGs, and extracted corresponding indicators to construct a universal and scientific evaluation index system for evaluating urban livability in arid zone. The UL system was divided into seven dimensions: economic growth, urban construction and population, urban public service capacity, resource consumption and utilization, living standard of residents, current situation of urban environment, environmental pollution. TOPSIS model and SYS-GMM model were adopted to explore the spatial-temporal evolution and key factors of urban livability in arid areas, 24 cities on the Loess Plateau from 2013 to 2018 were chosen for this study. The evaluation results indicate that the overall livable level of 24 cities is not ideal, the temporal characteristic shows a rising trend of fluctuation, and the spatial characteristic shows central depression. Additionally, the empirical results show that there are six key factors for urban livability in the Loess Plateau, the fixed asset investment and population density have a negative impact on UL, while environmental regulation, industrial structure optimization, income level and Institutional quality play a positive impact on UL. The UL index system can measure the UL situation comprehensively and scientifically, which can provide a universal applicability index system for ecologically sensitive & arid areas to research UL, construct ecological livable cities, and achieve SDGs.