The Ecological Regulation and Regional Sustainability in Greater Bay Area, China: A Perspective from the Synthetic Evaluation of Regional Carrying Capacity

Abstract:

This study profiled the synthetic carrying capacity of the urban agglomeration in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA), China. Herein, the chief objective was to examine the spatiotemporal evolution of sustainability status in GBA from the perspective of regional carrying capacity (RCC) between 2000 and 2015. Based on the diverse aspects of society, economy, environment, and transportation, the spatiotemporal transformations of urban environmental status in GBA were judged using multisource data, taking into consideration evaluating synthetic supporting and pressuring capacities. The results illustrate that the majority of increments in the regional land development pressure in GBA were spatially concentrated in the cities with dense-population, high-urbanized, and critical-resources, such as Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Macau, Foshan. Overall, the sustainability situations of all the cities in GBA exhibited a downward trend spanning the period of 2000-2015, with a large gap across cities. The spatial imbalance of the RCC magnitude in GBA has a superior potential to alleviate the regional development pressure. Thus, the local authorities in GBA could fully understand the situations of regional ecological assets, access environmental consequences of regional development, and further, ameliorate the scientific basis of future regulations and plans for coordinated development.