A new method to evaluate urban resources environment carrying capacityfrom the load-and-carrier perspective


Urban resources environment carrying capacity (URECC) is considered as a significant yardstick for guiding thepractice towards sustainable urban development. It helps measure the interaction between human activities andurban resources environment system. Although existing studies on URECC have made great progress, there isstill no consensus on the definition and evaluation method for URECC. In line with this background, this studyproposes a theoretical method named URECC-LC from the load-and-carrier innovative perspective. In developingthis method, urban resources environment is considered as a system, and the novel concepts of urban loads (UL)and urban carriers (UC) are introduced. Subsequently, the measurement of URECC is built up by incorporatingboth urban loads and carriers. This new method can be applied to evaluate effectively and properly the state ofURECC. Several novel insights for this innovative method are highlighted as: (a) sustainable development basedURECC assessment; (b) extension of URECC implication to urban resilience; (c) virtual threshold for measuringthe limitation of URECC. Taking urban water resources environment as an example, a case demonstration withreference to cities Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing in China is conducted, and the case results shows:(1) Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin represents a URECC deficit state for water resources environment almost everyyear (2004–2017) and Chongqing shows a URECC surplus state during the whole surveyed period; (2) theresilience of urban water resources environment is differing between the four case cities; (3) Shanghai has thehighest possibility (risk) for water resources environment carrying capacity to be overloaded, and the waterresources environment carrying capacity in Chongqing has been less utilized. The demonstration conductedproves that the introduced URECC-LC method is applicable and effective in evaluating URECC. And this newmethod provides significant theoretical basis for studying urban resources environments.