关键词: 紧凑城市, 能源消耗, 空间结构, 江苏省

Abstract:

The concept of compact city provides an efficient urban development model with a fine fabric and organic connection between urban spatial structures. It achieves intensive land utilization pattern by controlling the urban sprawl with urban growth boundary, as well as the linked communities by the advanced public transportation system. In addition, as one of the most recommendable urban development ways advocated by sustainability science, the greatest value of compact city is considered to reduce energy consumption significantly in the process of urban economic and social development. Taking Jiangsu Province as an example, this study selects mass of statistical data from 2007 to 2016, to explore whether a compact city can contribute to reducing power consumption and emission, and testing the quantitative relationship, how does compact urban structure affect energy consumption as well its force direction. Firstly, the urban compactness and energy consumption value are calculated. An assessment index system with five primary indicators (land utilization, economy, population, infrastructure, and public services) and twelve secondary indicators is built, and the urban compactness is measured by the value of these indicators. It should be noted that, subject to the limitation of the complexity of urban energy consumption statistics in China, energy consumption value is obtained by converting the original row data of the whole society’s electricity, total natural gas supply and total liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) supply into the standard coal then adding them together. Such processing method can greatly reduce the error of results. Secondly, the representation of urban compactness and energy consumption value are visualized spatially by prefecture-level city, and then the temporal and spatial evolution of these two variables are observed at four time points. Finally, the correlation between urban compactness and energy consumption is investigated by employing the grey relational analysis method, and the interactive mechanism of them is quantified by using the ordinary least squares method and the first-order difference generalized moment estimation in econometrics. This study finds that both urban compactness and energy consumption in Jiangsu Province have significant characteristics of spatial concentration, and the northern and southern parts of Jiangsu are significantly different by taking the Yangtze River as the boundary. Moreover, urban compactness and energy consumption are strongly correlated. The increase in compactness promotes its inhibitory effect on energy consumption, however, this effect shows typical timeliness and hysteresis. The utility of adjusting urban spatial structure will conduce to the changes of energy utilization structure gradually. Clearly, the results show that compact city plays an important role in the transformation process in terms of urban spatial development from incremental expansion to inventory optimization in the eastern China. Besides, from the perspective of practical application in spatial planning, compact city enhances the integration of production, living and ecological spaces in urban area, and promotes the sustainable and coordinated development.

Key words: compact city, energy consumption, spatial structure, Jiangsu Province