Guo Dong, professor at Columbia University: Sustainable urban development is a marathon, not a sprint

Edited by: Yang Yi

When housing prices are high, the environment is worried, and employment is difficult, can the city you live in be sustainable? This is obviously not a conclusion based on GDP alone. Sustainable development has become a global consensus, and the sustainability of cities is most closely related to the destiny of individuals.

In a study conducted by the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and the Earth Institute of Columbia University in the United States, the sustainable development performance of China's provinces and 110 large and medium-sized cities was quantitatively evaluated and ranked. The study, which began in 2014, considered 24 indicators of economic development, the environment and social well-being. The Blue Book of Sustainable Development: China's Sustainable Development Assessment Report (2023) was released in early December 2023 during COP28 (2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference) in Dubai.

Guo Dong pointed out that to improve the sustainable development indicators of cities, it is necessary to focus on the characteristics of the city itself, rather than blindly following the herd, involution and internal friction. The picture shows Guo Dong provided by the interviewee

"Cities are at the heart of solving sustainable development problems and are the main battlegrounds for tackling climate change. Guo Dong, one of the main leaders of the research project, professor of sustainable management at Columbia University and deputy director of the Center for Sustainable Development Policy and Management, said in an exclusive interview with the reporter of "Daily Economic News".

In the newly released 2023 comprehensive ranking of urban sustainable development, the top 10 cities are: Hangzhou, Zhuhai, Wuxi, Qingdao, Nanjing, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Jinan, and Suzhou. In recent years, the ranking of the Urban Sustainability Index has been generally stable, but it has also risen and fallen. In this regard, Guo Dong said that sustainable development is a marathon, not a sprint, and it is difficult to change the ranking, which requires continuous policy efforts and changes in public behavior. This concept is reflected in the project's index system and weight distribution, which is very innovative.

"To improve the sustainable development indicators of cities, we need to focus on the characteristics of the city itself, seek our own comparative advantages according to natural endowment, geographical location, population conditions and other factors, and find our own sustainable development path, rather than blindly following the herd, involution and internal friction. This is Guo Dong's suggestion to the city governors. He also believes that if you want to seek your own development path, you can't just talk about heroes. The design of the sustainable development index system is also in the hope that the evaluation indicators can be diversified.

Talking about the original intention of the research: not to judge success or failure by a single indicator

NBD: What is the original intention of this study? Guo Dong: There is an adage in management that says, "There is no management without indicators". At present, many provinces, cities and enterprises are formulating specific action plans to achieve the dual carbon goals. The process of achieving the target requires the development of specific indicators to guide and assess progress. Without indicators, it is difficult to compare and evaluate between cities and institutions, and without benchmarking, we will not know whether we are doing well or badly, fast or slow, which is the original intention of our design of this indicator system.

We are building a sustainable development indicator system in the hope that the assessment of development can be diversified. Don't judge success or failure by a single metric. In recent years, the world has undergone great changes due to the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, and the impact of climate change on our production and life. Economic development is important, but people's definition of a better life has also begun to change fundamentally and become more diversified as income levels increase.

NBD: What's new in the 2024 China Top 100 Cities Sustainability Index Rankings?

Guo Dong: One of the main changes in 2024 is to expand from 100 cities to 110 cities in 2023. All cities with more than 5 million urban residents are included in the ranking system.

Hangzhou ranked first for three consecutive years, Zhuhai second, and Wuxi third. The ranking is still relatively stable, Changsha fell out of the top ten, and Suzhou returned to the top ten. Compared with 2023, the overall level of sustainable development of Chinese cities has improved, and the fluctuation of city rankings among various indicators has become smaller, and all cities are steadily advancing the process of sustainable development.

Among the first-tier cities, only Shenzhen is not in the top ten, mainly because the permanent population of Shenzhen is 17.56 million in the seventh national census (hereinafter referred to as the "seventh census"), while the permanent population announced in the sample statistics of the previous year is 13.43 million, and the permanent population has increased by 4.12 million after the revision of the seven census data, an increase of 30%, which is the largest change in the permanent population of first-tier cities, with an increase of 1.66%, 2.4% and 22% respectively in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Therefore, the sharp increase in Shenzhen's permanent population has led to a decline in per capita resource ownership, which has affected the ranking of social and people's livelihood, resources and environment, and caused the overall sustainable development ranking to decline.

NBD: What are the trends and features in the indicator rankings in 2024?

Guo Dong: We have category rankings. For example, the cities with the leading economic development quality will be about the same as in 2023, and the ranking of individual cities will change slightly. Judging from the economic development ranking of each city, the overall economic development level of the eastern cities is still relatively good. The cities with the highest economic development rankings are mainly cities in the Yangtze River basin and the Pearl River Delta.

Nanjing has ranked first in this aspect of economic development for two consecutive years. Except for Nanjing, other cities that have performed well in the field of social and people's livelihood are outside the top 10 in terms of economic development. Therefore, economic development and the development of social and people's livelihood are still relatively out of sync.

The top 10 cities in the resource and environment classification are mainly in the southern provinces. These places may be rich in resources and have a better ecological environment. Lhasa has been ranked first in terms of ecological environment for four consecutive years. The indicators of natural resources and environment are mainly water resources per capita, urban green space per 10,000 people, and the average annual air pollution index.

Talking about development and upgrading: Of course, it is not enough to rely on government promotion alone

NBD: Cities with good economic development may not perform so well in terms of social and people's livelihood, why is that?

Guo Dong: There is such an imbalance. Now that the United Nations has 17 goals for sustainable development, are these 17 goals interchangeable? According to the standards of the United Nations, these 17 development goals are equally important.

But after all, natural and social resources, as well as government resources, are limited, so sometimes there has to be a trade-off. If all goals are equally important, will countries, provinces and municipalities focus on the aspects that are easier to improve and easier to improve, and ignore the aspects that can have the greatest impact on local sustainable development? In fact, the substitutability of various aspects of sustainability has always been controversial in academics.

The performance of many cities in different indicators is very uneven. This involves a big problem, and sustainable development is a concept of multi-domain coordinated development. Many of our current assessments and calculations rely on alternative calculations. If it is determined that it is irreplaceable, and a set of algorithms is changed, in fact, many first- and second-tier cities will be greatly reduced, because the development of these cities is often the most unbalanced, with some indicators leading the country, while others, such as congestion and the cost of living, may be at the bottom.

NBD: There is also a comparison between international cities and Chinese cities in the Blue Book, what did you find?

Guo Dong: We used some individual indicators to compare the sustainable development of Chinese cities with those of international cities. Although Chinese cities, including Hangzhou, still lag significantly behind their international counterparts in some areas, the statistics of the indicators also clearly reflect the progress of domestic cities year by year.

In terms of consumption emissions, domestic cities are still performing relatively well. In terms of water consumption per unit of GDP, Shenzhen has ranked high among the 110 cities in the country for three consecutive years, probably reaching the international level. First-tier cities as a whole have done a good job in energy conservation and emission reduction, mainly because such large cities are facing great pressure on energy conservation and emission reduction. Ningbo, Guangzhou, and Zhuhai are relatively large cities on the southeast coast, and they attach great importance to the efficient use of resources.

NBD: How can a city improve its sustainability?

Guo Dong: In terms of sustainable urban development, we need to look at sustainable changes, and we must have long-term efforts in policies. The living standards of residents have really been qualitatively improved, and sustainable improvement will be in line with the concept of sustainable development. It will take a long time for city leaders to improve the city's sustainability indicators. There needs to be a focus on the character of the city itself, rather than blindly pursuing short-term gains. Many of the sustainable development concepts advocated today are a multi-stakeholder model. Governments everywhere in the world have limited resources at their disposal, and it is certainly not enough for them to promote sustainable development alone. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage the public to actively participate in the sustainable development of cities, change their own behavior, and encourage the public, the private sector, non-profit organizations and other stakeholders to play a greater role.

Talking about indicator design: care about longer-term changes

NBD: What are the features of this project in terms of the design of the indicator system?

Guo Dong: Sustainable development requires a long process of improvement. The design of our metrics is more focused on some longer-term changes. Therefore, it takes a long time to improve the ranking. This design is mainly in the setting of weights, which is a relatively innovative approach. The vast majority of China's 110 cities have GDP growth rates of between 2.5% and 4.5%. So if a city changes a little bit from year to year, it will have a big impact on the ranking of the overall GDP growth rate indicator.

It's like a sprint, where a difference of 0.1 seconds can determine the championship, runner-up or even more. Sustainability is a marathon, not a sprint. We believe that this kind of metric, which differentiates the performance of cities with small differences, is not a good indicator of sustainability. Just as a 0.1 second difference may be important for an athlete on the field, it is clearly inappropriate to use it as a measure of human physical development. Sustainability is a very long-term concept, a concept of intergenerational equity. We cannot give high weight to sustainability to such indicators, which do not vary much.

NBD: How are the weights of the Sustainability Index distributed?

Guo Dong: In general, to make a similar ranking system or index, the weights are subjectively designed by experts. Our weights are not designed by expert scoring, but calculated using statistical methods.

In our indicator system, those indicators that do not have a big performance gap between cities will have a smaller weight. The lowest weight in our index system is the harmless treatment rate of domestic waste, which is 0.95. Because of this indicator, all cities are in 85%~95%. It's like an exam, raising a score from 98 to 100 doesn't have much meaning for the acquisition of knowledge itself, and it would be too "volume" to rank these students who are already excellent in their own right, and at the same time give this ranking a lot of social significance. And from 60 to 80 points, this improvement is significant. We should give a large weight to some indicators that are not easy to change, and which vary greatly from city to city.

So sustainable development is a marathon, and it's very difficult for a marathon to change the rankings, not to say that you can catch up with today's training efforts, and it's not that whoever is in good shape now can surpass others. I need qualitative and fundamental change to outperform my opponents. Isn't that what sustainability is all about?

Talking about the focus of the city: "The bell must be tied to the bell"

NBD: Why is sustainable urban development important?

Guo Dong: Cities only occupy 2% of the earth's land area, but they consume more than 75% of natural resources and 75% of carbon emissions. Solving the problem of sustainable development of the city is the top priority to solve the problem of sustainable development.

If we want to solve the sustainable development problems of the country and the world, we need to focus on cities, because this is the root cause.

NBD: What are the advantages of sustainable development in cities?

Guo Dong: Under the constraints of resources and environment, we only have two sustainable development paths, either to save use, that is, to improve the use of resources and energy efficiency, or to find alternatives and engage in innovation. If we talk about conservation, cities must be the most resource-saving way of life. Another way is to innovate, such as finding alternative energy sources that can also solve resource constraints. From the point of view of innovation, cities are actually hotbeds of innovation. Where people gather, it is often when people are together that they can collide with the spark of innovation. Cities are therefore the most resource-efficient way of life and a hotbed of employment and innovation.

There is also a very fundamental aspect. More and more people live in cities, and we care about the impact of urban environmental problems and extreme weather on our production and life.

National Business Daily