Research On Sustainable Development Evaluation Of Small Towns

The development of small towns is not only an important way to promoteurbanization, but also a key step for coordinating urban and rural development. Currentconstruction of small towns in our country has great vulnerability in both the status ofresources&environment and the connection of economy&society, so a sustainabledevelopment mode of small towns must be chosen. How to judge whether thedevelopment of small towns is sustainable and how to estimate the situation ofsustainable development in quantitative measurement are going to be researchedmainly in this paper.First the paper summarizes the general research situation of small towns’development in China and abroad, on this basis considers small towns as the synthesisof economy, society, construction, resources&environment, and analyzes the affectmechanism of these four systems in the process of small towns’ development.Secondly based on the typical index systems set up in previous research on urbansustainable development, current conditions of small towns in our country anddemands of application in practice, the paper establishes an index system ofsustainable development evaluation of small towns with economy, society,construction, resources&environment four systems including thirty-seven indexes. Inthe course of explorations of evaluation method, two evaluation coefficients of smalltowns’ sustainable development including comprehensive index and coordinativeindex are found: to obtain comprehensive development level by the PrincipleComponent Analysis&the Analytical Hierarchy Process and coordinating degree by anarithmetic model based on membership function.Finally, an empirical study has been done with small towns in Pingdu City as the case, theresult shows that: comprehensive development level of small towns in Pingdu City has beensteadily increasing except for two years of weak growth, totally having a sustainable mode;coordinating degrees between two systems are in fluctuation, but mainly belonging toexcellent coordination and good coordination. Then in accordance with the result ofsustainable development evaluation, the paper systematically analyzes the problems ineconomy, society, construction, resources&environment and the defects in coordination between systems during the development of small towns in Pingdu City,and provides some relevant suggestions and countermeasures.