The comprehensive evaluation of China’s urbanization and effects on resources and environment

This paper constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system for the urbanization level in China in terms of four aspects of urbanization connotation: population, economy, society, and land. A comprehensive measurement is carried out for the Chinese urbanization between 1981 and 2006 based on the Entropy method. The results show that the comprehensive level of urbanization in China has a continuous increase with the major features of economic growth and a rapid evolution of the geographical landscape, followed by population urbanization and then social urbanization of health care standard; the distinguished evolutional characteristics can also be found in each of the subsystems. The integrated evolution of urbanization has a profound effect on the resources, energy and the environment, making the land resources and energy security situation under severe pressure. The environment pressure is also increased further.