Change of urban ecosystem development—A case study of Beijing, China

Considering its characteristics in terms of structure, function, performance and evolution, the urban ecosystem can be regarded as a vital organism. Based on the concept of urban vital organism, the framework of urban vitality index covering producing power, living status, ecological ascendancy and vital force, is constructed to represent the urban ecosystem development status from the economic subsystem, social subsystem, natural subsystem and ecological regulatory subsystem, respectively. Meanwhile, set pair analysis, an assessment method which can link different objects and describe their relationships, was combined with the urban vitality index to evaluate the relative urban ecosystem development levels. Choosing the situation of Beijing city from 1986 to 2005 as the case, the change of urban ecosystem development levels during the period were analyzed, by using the relative assessment model based on urban vitality index. Based on the results of the urban vitality index and its each factor, the change of urban ecosystem development on the scales of the whole ecosystem and each studied subsystems can be revealed, which implies the focus of urban ecological planning and management in the future.