Chinese Journal of Urban and Environmental Studies

Ecological development is essentially the process of building a resource-efficient, environment-friendly and ecologically-safe society, and of achieving modernization that features harmonious coexistence between man and nature. Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization offers answers to such theoretical and practical questions as why to build an ecological civilization, what the goal is and how to achieve it. Its practice model focuses on explaining the norms, content, paths and methods of building an ecological civilization. It is a structural and operable approach for implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization and guiding the construction of ecological civilization. As an intermediate link between Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization and eco-civilization construction, the practice model is not only an indispensable part of the former, but also the key to combine the theory and practice concerning the two.

The life community of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes and grasslands (MRFFLG) and its systemic governance are key components to build ecological civilization in China. It comprises diverse connotations in value, scientific and economic dimensions. Epistemologically, it comes from the Chinese traditional philosophy of harmonious coexistence of heaven, earth and man, and conforms to the Western ecological ethics, complex system science and environmental value theory. Methodologically, as a complex socio-ecological system in which man and nature interact and coexist, the life community of the MRFFLG should be governed coordinately from both narrow and broad views. At the policy level, from the perspectives of narrow synergy among ecological subsystems and broad synergy among the complex socio-ecological system, this paper evaluates the performance indicators of 16 pilot projects of the MRFFLG, and points out that the design of most pilot projects well reflects the narrow synergy of multiple ecological elements, but is short of attention to the broad synergy of green development and ecological civilization. There are two practical ways to promote the systemic governance of the MRFFLG. First, it needs to focus on the coordinated governance of watershed and ecological environment restoration against the background of global climate and environmental change. The goal is to restore and improve the service functions of ecological subsystems and enhance their climate adaptability. Second, in the context of new urbanization and green development transition, it requires a collaborative planning focusing on natural capital and green infrastructure investment, which is aimed at cultivating ecological dividends and realizing ecological economy.

To obtain precise information about enterprises’ pollution control and take corresponding environmental protection measures is the key to preventing and controlling industrial pollution. Taking the lead–acid battery industry as an example, this paper employs data from the Environmental Enforcement Action to analyze the urban–rural and inter-provincial distributions of pollution-intensive enterprises and to quantitatively verify the spatial differences in China’s environmental regulation on industrial pollution. The study finds that lead–acid battery manufacturing enterprises are mainly located in rural areas instead of urban areas; most pollution-intensive firms located in industrial parks, especially those approved by governments below the provincial level. The multivariate logistic model analysis finds that environmental regulation in urban districts is more strict than that in towns and villages, while the suburban areas are the laxest; environmental regulation in national-level development zones is more strict than that in provincial-level development zones, while zones below the provincial level are the laxest. In general, the environmental regulation is stricter in urban areas than in rural areas, and stricter in clustered space than in scattered space, while most inter-provincial environmental regulations have no significant differences. Local governments should effectively allocate conventional environmental law enforcement resources and shift the focus of law enforcement downwards to parks below the provincial level, and on suburbs and townships.

The greenhouse gas (GHG) emission pressure faced by resource-based heavy industrial cities was mainly induced by multi-scale interactions, which require systematical assessments from local, regional, national and global scales. Taking Tangshan city, a heavy industry base in Hebei Province of China, as the research area, this study carried out a multi-scale analysis on the GHG emissions in terms of final demand, final consumption and trade balance. The main results are as follows: (1) The average embodied intensity of GHG emissions in Tangshan was 27.6 tons/10,000 CNY, of which 66.2% was caused by local inputs; (2) The secondary industry was the main source for the relatively high GHG emissions in Tangshan; (3) The GHG emissions embodied in final demand were 201.6 million tons, within which the proportion of fixed capital formation reached 59.4%; (4) As for the trade balance, Tangshan was a net exporter of embodied GHG emissions, with the total net outflows of 411.6 million tons. Depicting the GHG emission flows and sorting out the multiple GHG emission inventory would be helpful to identify the transformation pressure of resource-based heavy industry cities, which would be significant for the adjustments in industrial structures and policy optimization of energy saving and emissions reduction.

Based on the multi-regional input-output framework, this paper analyzed the labor and energy transfer embodied in interregional trade in China. Meanwhile, through estimating the energy intensity per unit of labor embodied in final products in each region, this study examines whether the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical hypothesis and provides relevant explanations and industrial development suggestions. Results show that east coastal region and central region are the two main participants in interregional trade. As for the labor embodied in trade, east coastal region is the largest exporter of embodied labor, though it has the highest wage among eight regions; in contrast, north coastal and southwestern region, with relatively low wage, are the two largest importer of embodied labor. As for the energy embodied in trade, northwestern region is the largest exporter of embodied energy. Further analysis indicates that the energy intensity per unit of labor in region with relatively low GRP (such as northwestern region) is the highest, whereas those in Beijing-Tianjin Region and south coastal region (with relatively high GRP) are the lowest. By analyzing the Revealed Comparative Advantage in each region, the paper finds that the main reason for this inconsistency lies in the industrial structure in northwestern and north coastal region, which are highly dependent in primary industries. Improving the infrastructure and upgrading industrial structure are important steps for these regions to transform the extensive growth mode.

Most previous studies have focused on the impact of subways on housing prices instead of rents, while the latter could better measure residential values. Based on a dataset collected from a real estate agency in Beijing, which contains more than 900,000 housing rental transaction records from 2011 to 2020, this paper empirically evaluates the causal effect of subway network expansion on housing rents. It employs a series of progressive difference-in-difference (DID) approaches, to estimate the impact and determine the impact scope. The findings demonstrate that a reduction of the distance to subway stations by 1 km increases the rents by 2.32%; the impact scope is about 1.5 km and the average rent appreciation within the range is 5%. The addition of a line for non-transfer stations raises the rents by 10% for houses 1.5–2 km away from the stations, extending the impact scope. Houses with large areas in upscale and old neighborhoods near the city center are affected less by subways. It also confirms the siphon effect in the rental market, i.e.: rents of houses far away from the new stations fall after the opening of the stations.