Low-carbon development quality of cities in China: Evaluation and obstacle analysis.

• The study establishes an evaluation system of cities' low-carbon development quality. • The study divides 259 cities into four grades according to their evaluation scores. • There are no high quality cities in the western regions. • Urban planning and energy utilization play a smaller role in low-carbon development. • Social, economic, environmental factors are the main obstacles of low-carbon quality. Cities' low carbon development has become an important measure to cope with climate change and promote sustainable development in China. Existing researches have been carried out on comprehensive evaluations of low-carbon development at the national, regional and provincial levels, little work has been done on the overall evaluation of the low-carbon development quality of prefecture level cities. This paper establishes the evaluation index system of cities' low-carbon development quality from the perspectives of economy, society, urban planning, energy utilization and environment. According to the scores of the low-carbon development quality calculated by TOPSIS method, 259 cities are divided into four grades. The results indicate that cities with better and medium better quality are mainly concentrated in the central and eastern regions, while there are no better quality cities in the western regions. The average score of low-carbon development quality of 259 cities is 0.242, among which the average score of better quality cities is three times as high as that of worse quality cities. The obstacle analysis shows that low-carbon economy, low-carbon society and low-carbon environment are the main obstacles restricting cities' low-carbon development quality, while the impact of urban planning and energy utilization is relatively weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]