Comprehensive evaluation on urban sustainable development of Harbin City in Northeast China

It is an effective way in realizing urban coordinated and sustainable development to establish a series of indicators and to evaluate urban environmental and socioeconomic development. According to the characteristics of Harbin City in Northeast China, an indicator system including five subsystems and 37 indicators was established for comprehensive evaluation on urban sustainable development. The development indexes of all urban subsystems and complex system were calculated quantitatively using the comprehensively integrated methods composed of Principle Component Analysis, Analytic Hierarchy Process and weighed index method, and then the comprehensive level of urban sustainable development and the degree of urban interior coordination were analyzed. The results indicated that 1) the overall urban development presented an uptrend, however, the interior development was not well balanced from 1996 to 2006; 2) the development in each subsystem presented a strong fluctuation; and 3) the development in resources subsystem showed a downtrend. Based on those results, the suggestions of urban sustainable development were put forward at the end.