A fuzzy assessment of sustainable urban development based on analytic hierarchy process

This paper describes an assessment of urban sustainability based on a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process approach. An empirical research is explored in the city of Shijiazhuang, northeast of China. The assessment results show that sustainable city development in Shijiazhuang in recent years evolves to a much higher level as a whole, and it has reached the medium-level sustainable development in 2003. From 1999 to 2003, except the sustainability of city institution is declining, the sustainability of economy, society and environment all are being improved continuously. However, compared with other capital cities in China, there still remain some gaps in the sustainable urban development aspects. As far as the coordination of sustainable city development is concerned, it is a downward trend in next few years. The coordination between environment and institution is the worst, and it is also very disharmony between economy development and the environment development in Shijiazhuang.