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Sustainable construction projects affect various stakeholders with different social, environmental and economic interests. It is essential that the decision makers maintain effective communication with relevant groups to avoid project failures. Although citizen participation offers a means of better addressing and meeting stakeholder concerns and expectations, the decision/evaluations of contemporary sustainable projects are becoming ever more complicated, with an increasing number of stakeholders involved to actively defend their own interests. In response, this paper provides a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the stakeholders of sustainable construction in China and quantifies their influence in decision/evaluations by semi-structured interviews (in research stage I) and a three-round Delphi survey (in research stage II). Follow-up interviews (in research stage III) are carried out to collect more in-depth views concerning the characteristics and the respective importance of each stakeholder group involved. The findings indicate that the government is the most influential entity and the extent to which its intervention is needed in balancing the interests of other stakeholders presents a major challenge. The high potential influence of end-users is also identified, suggesting the need for a more transparent and inclusive participatory decision/evaluation process in the country. An enhanced future role for NGOs is further identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In current practice, urban-rural development has been regarded as one of the key pillars in driving regenerative development that includes economic, social, and environmental balance. In association with rapid urbanization, an important contemporary issue in China is that its rural areas are increasingly lagging behind urban areas in their development and a coordinated provision of public facilities in rural areas is necessary to achieve a better balance. A model is therefore introduced for quantifying the effect of individual infrastructure projects on urban-rural balance (e-UR) by focusing on two attributes, namely, efficiency and equity. The model is demonstrated through a multi-criteria model, developed with data collected from infrastructure projects in Chongqing, with the criteria values for each project being scored by comparing data collected from the project involved with e-UR neutral “benchmark” values derived from a survey of experts in the field. The model helps evaluate the contribution of the projects to improving rural-urban balance and hence enable government decision-makers for the first time to prioritize future projects rigorously in terms of their likely contribution too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]