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| FUZZY COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION OF DIFFERENCES IN URBANIZATION LEVELS——A Case Study of Lintong District, Xi'an |
| WANG Wen-bo, CAI Yun-long |
| Department of Geography, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China |
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Abstract A single urbanized population index does not accurately represent the differences in urbanization levels of small towns. This paper seeks to suggest a more comprehensive urbanization evaluation method that uses instead a two-level indicator variable system. This method of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation utilizes the summarized statistical data to compare and analyze the different levels of urbanization in towns of Lintong district.
This process of comprehensive evaluation relies on two layers of detail. The base layer uses data on population, production value, industrial development, and transportation infrastructure as indicators of urbanization level. This combination provides a much more robust evaluation of urbanization differences than the single urbanized population ratio. Each of these base indexes can be further divided into related secondary indicators to give a more comprehensive measure of urbanization level: 1) The population index can be subdivided into non-agricultural population and density of population figures for each town. The comprehensive evaluation method can then be applied to these secondary indicators and an overall population index value can be calculated. 2) The production value index reflects the production output values in each town. This indicator can be subdivided into industrial output and the ration of agricultural output to industrial output; each of these sub-indicators can be further normalized and classified. Using these secondary indicator values, the comprehensive evaluation method can be applied to calculate an overall production value. 3) The industrial development index represents the layout of industries and enterprises. It can be calculated from the following secondary indexes: distribution of enterprises above a designated size, situation of industrial parks, and distribution of high-tech and new-tech enterprises. 4) The transportation infrastructure index is a measure of the accessibility of each node. It can be calculated by examining the number of railways, highways, provincial roads, county roads and rural roads in a given region.
The four above-mentioned indexes and the comprehensive evaluation method can be used to calculate the different urbanization levels present in Lintong district. The results show that towns in Lintong district can be assigned to one of the following classifications: core urbanized area, centrally-located town, important town, general town. This method of evaluation will contribute to the urban system planning in Lintong district.
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Received: 30 January 2007
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2008, Vol. 23 
