Re-Assessing Sustainable Urban Development from the Resident Perspective: A Case Study of Shanghai

The measuring method of sustainable development level based on urban official statistics is relatively objective, and an increasing number of countries have used it to assess government performance and city ranking. However, there is still no effective measures to make urban development more resilient and sustainable. This paper investigates the limitations of the existing urban sustainable development assessing methods and reassesses urban sustainability from the perspective of resident perception. First, we refined a six-dimensional evaluation index system by expert interview and literature review. Then, we used the method combining the entropy weight and cloud model to comprehensively measure the sustainability level of different regions in Shanghai. We found that the sustainable development level of the center city, new town, and suburb areas were classified between “middle” and “good”, while the suburb areas were closer to the “middle” level, and the center city, new town areas were closer to the “good” level. The highest sustainable level was found in the center city areas, which exhibited obvious heterogeneity and robustness. The new town’s sustainability level is the second, while it experiences the fastest development speed. From the perspective of the whole city, the resident perceived sustainability of economic living, social security, public service, city environment, and infrastructure have reached the “middle” level and above, with the best assessment for infrastructure. The exception is the perception related to public traffic. This study contributes a new angle of resident perception and the “entropy weight-cloud model” method for conducting an integrated assessment of urban sustainability. While revealing sustainable development level of the whole city, it can also help making a detailed comparative analysis of the sustainability differences from different regions and different dimensions.