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Many major cities today are beginning to experience increasing water shortages. A major use of water is often in industrial production, and therefore its reduction should go a long way to correcting the situation. The composition of the whole local or regional industrial structure has a significant influence on this, with its combination of sectors of different resource-intensities varying in their scale of use. However, the form of industrial structure also has an influence on other aspects of city life – particularly its economic performance. Evaluating industrial structure, therefore, involves an optimization problem of, on the one hand, determining the appropriate proportions of various types of sectors that will best satisfy the objective of minimizing water consumption in the face of a range of economic and other constraints. Alternatively, it can be seen as an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing economic benefit under a range of water use and other constraints. In developing the optimization model, we first break down industrial water use into two objectives - (1) minimizing total consumption and (2) minimizing intensity (per unit) of consumption. Adding the economic objective of maximizing Gross Domestic Product (GDP), all three are then optimized retrospectively by a series of input-output analyses to evaluate the suitability of the industrial structure. The application of the model is demonstrated in a case study of Beijing that indicates that, while its industrial structures in 1992 and 2002 were far from optimal, the actual 2012 industrial structure was quite close to that determined by the model and augurs well for the city's future sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is facing the challenge of sustainable urban redevelopment due to its massive economic transformation process. As a unique product of the rapid urbanization of past decades, urban village has become a major obstacle for sustainable redevelopment because of its sub-standard infrastructure and disordered built environment. Redevelopment of ‘villages in the city’ (ViCs) is distinct from normal urban redevelopment because it involves the change of collective land ownership without de jure property rights to state land ownership with de jure property rights. What site characteristics, what ownership type, what geographical characteristics, make village sites more likely to be redeveloped? This study addresses this question with particular reference to industrial sites in Shenzhen. An analytical framework is developed based on the concept of rent gap to analyze the possible effects of these factors. An empirical investigation is conducted based on a set of data that covers all 44 village-owned industrial sites in the Nanshan District in Shenzhen. The findings suggest that village sites with better accessibility to good transportation facilities and the city centre are significantly more likely to be redeveloped and thus will be integrated into formal urban areas earlier than those located in less accessible areas. It is also demonstrated that fragmented land ownership and lack of legal land rights are not significant barriers for the sustainable redevelopment of such sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regenerative sustainability is emerging as an alternative discourse around the transition from a ‘mechanistic’ to an ‘ecological’ or living systems worldview. This view helps us to re-conceptualize relationships among humans' technological, ecological, economic, social and political systems. Through exploration of ‘net positive’ or ‘regenerative’ development lenses and the traditional sustainability literature, the conceptualization and approaches to achieve sustainable development and ecological modernization are expanded to articulate and to explore the evolving sustainability discourse, ‘regenerative sustainability’. This Special Volume of Journal of Cleaner Production (SV) is focused upon various dimensions of regenerative sustainability (e.g. regenerative design, regenerative development, and positive development) applied to the urban built environment at scales, which range from individual buildings, neighbourhoods, and urban developments to integrated regional sustainable development. The main focus is on how these approaches and developments are evolving, how they can help us to prevent or adapt to climate change and how these approaches are likely to evolve in the next two to three decades. These approaches are addressed in four themes: (1) reviewing the theoretical development of the discourse of regenerative sustainability, its emerging principles and practices, (2) explaining how it can be measured and monitored, (3) providing encouraging practical pathways and examples of its implementation in multiple cultural and climatic contexts, and (4) mapping obstacles and enablers that must be addressed to help to ensure that more rapid progress is made in implementing the transitions towards an urban built environment that supports genuinely sustainable societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Spatiotemporal pattern of habitat quality in Hangzhou was assessed by InVEST model. • Spatial distribution of habitat quality showed positive spatial auto-correlation. • Negative impact of urbanization on habitat quality varied with time and space. • Impacts of landscape pattern on habitat quality differed in magnitude and direction. China has experienced the most serious habitat degradation, especially in fast-growing metropolis cities. Although increasing attentions have been brought to this issue, we still lack the understanding of the quantitative impacts of urbanization and landscape pattern on habitats. In this study, we used the "Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Trade-off" (InVEST) model to evaluate the habitat quality in Hangzhou city. We further employed spatial auto-correlation to analyze its spatiotemporal pattern variation characteristics. Finally, the ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models were used to explore the impacts of urbanization and landscape pattern change on habitat quality. The results show that the habitat quality index of Hangzhou decreased from 0.608 to 0.577 during 2004–2015, and these areas mainly located around the suburb decreased significantly. The spatial distribution of habitat quality showed significantly positive spatial auto-correlation, and the overall spatial auto-correlation degree of the habitat quality increased during this time. Rapid urbanization has significant negative effects on habitat quality in various areas, while the magnitude and direction of the impacts of landscape pattern on habitat quality differed in time and space. These results provide decision-making criteria for formulating differential urban development policies and landscape management measures for urban ecological sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The spatial dynamics of urban construction land were explored by using a hybrid Logistic CA model. • We visualize how predictions on spatial expansion will benefit urban planners and policymakers. • The model could explain the underlying mechanism of urban growth in a spatial-economic and social way. • We indicate the effective quantification of land patches can improve the compact urban growth. • Effective quantification of the construction land patches could reduce the unordered urban growth. Why does some urban area grow faster than others? Although the role of spatial optimization of urban construction land is at the core of regional economic development, the question remains to be answered so far. This paper aims to explore the spatial dynamics of urban construction land in the central urban areas by integrating Logistic regression and cellular automata models. The combination of the two modeling approaches aims to investigate the evolving dynamics of urban land use patterns and further visualize how predictions on spatial expansion will benefit urban planners and policymakers. Simulation analysis emphasized to what extent do the influencing factors promote or inhibit urban growth. Theoretical frameworks tend to explain the underlying mechanism of urban growth in a spatial, economic and social way, taking the city growth as a self-organized organism with complex actors and rules. In this paper, we present a hybrid Logistic cellular automata model to examine the city's self-organizing spatial growth process from a bottom-up perspective and interpret why non-construction land was converted to construction land for urban development purposes at Hangzhou in the past two decades. We argue that although the construction land is dispersed irregularly across the city, the logistic cellular automata model will generate the underlying patterns of urban expansion and offer more facts-based implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sharp increase in global urban population and rapid expansion of impervious urban surfaces is raising concerns over more than just the quality of human life; researchers are also worried about ecosystem services and the stability and security of urban ecosystems and the infrastructures. In this paper, we define “urban ecological infrastructure” and propose an integrated framework in which the infrastructure network provides ecosystem services and sustainable urban systems despite changing landscapes and climate. We define the urban ecological infrastructure (UEI) as an organic integration of blue (water-based), green (vegetated), and grey (non-living) landscapes, combined with exits (outflows, treatment, or recycling) and arteries (corridors), at an ecosystem scale. The UEI framework represents the biotic and abiotic interactions within an ecosystem, and stresses an integrated relationship between artificial and natural systems. It links the grey, blue, and green infrastructures, and integrates them via both exits and arteries. Its insights can help to improve the circulation and reuse of resources throughout the urban ecosystem. This comprehensive conceptual framework can facilitate more rational urban development, and can improve urban ecosystem services and regional sustainability. Although understanding the form and function of UEIs is an important first step, innovative strategies are needed to address challenging obstacles such as rigid thinking, institutional fragmentation and inflexible policies. New thinking and innovative ways of acting will be required to provide a more resilient, stable, and sustainable urban system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing awareness of the need to improve built environments in declined urban areas worldwide has raised the popularity of urban regeneration as a research topic. Various tools, such as questionnaire surveys, analytic hierarchy process, and fuzzy set theory, have been developed to measure the sustainability of urban regeneration and ensure that it follows the principles of sustainable development. However, these studies, which rely on the indicator system, assume that urban regeneration is a static and isolated state during the assessment process. Hence, this study aims to provide an alternative model for measuring sustainability of urban regeneration. Fuzzy set theory and Monte Carlo simulation were introduced to solicit critical measurement indicators that would lay a unified basis for comparison. Entropy method was also used to determine the weights of relevant critical measurement indicators to avoid subjective judgment. A general decision-making framework for dynamic monitoring of urban regeneration was developed based on the dynamic change of sustainability of urban regeneration ( V k ) and urgency of urban regeneration ( U k ). Four scenarios were discussed based on the four quadrants generated by V k and U k . Therefore, sustainable urban regeneration can be identified and compared through the V k – U k coordinate system, and the best practices of urban regeneration can be determined for global promotion. This model has the advantages to process the fuzzy and subjective nature in indicator assessment of sustainability of urban regeneration, which is an improvement compared with existing studies. As well, the decision-making framework could assist policy-makers in determining the sustainability of an ongoing urban regeneration as well in performing a dynamic and long-term monitoring of the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]