۱- Introduction

۲- Methodology

۳- Results

۴- Discussion and conclusion

References

Abstract

Recent intensive eco-city development in China has been accompanied by rising enthusiasm for environmental sustainability indicators. Whilst there are calls for the indicators to be standardised, and criticism of the difficulties in applying them, little effort has been made to understand their scientific rationale. This article employs a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to investigate the use of environmental indicators from the Tianjin Eco-City Key Performance Indicators by the international scientific community working on urban sustainability. The findings draw a clear picture of the place of Tianjin Eco-City’s indicators in the international scientific literature. China’s ecological problems are found to attract interest not only from domestic researchers but also researchers outside the country. The indicators are used not only for urban planning and management but also for a wide range of urban-related and non-urban-related purposes. The scientific rationale of the eleven indicators is specifically addressed, revealing a number of underlying questions about the Tianjin Eco-City indicators.

Introduction

Following the recent promotion of eco-cities, there is increasing interest among researchers and policy makers in sustainability assessment. A sustainable city can be defined by analogy with the Brundtland Commission’s definition of sustainable development (WCED, 1987) as a city that ensures that development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Conventionally incorporated into the triple bottom line of environmental, social and economic criteria, the substantive purpose of sustainability assessment is to provide policymakers and city planners with tools for evaluating their cities and to help them to decide what actions to take and not to take (Devuyst et al., 2001). In this context, the main functions of sustainability assessment include decision-making and decision management, target setting, advocacy, participation and consensus building (Joss et al., 2012; Parris and Kates, 2003; Pastille Consortium, 2002). The indicators can be broken down into single-unit indices (such as ecological footprint, wellbeing index, emergy) and indicator-based indices. By contrast with single-unit indices, which score the combined performances of a city, indicator-based indices provide disaggregated information and are used to track sector-level factors (Fiala, 2008).