Are global cities sustainability champions? A double delinking analysis of environmental performance of urban agglomerations

• Published in: The Science of the total environment 2020-03, Vol.709, p.134963-134963, Article 134963
• Main Authors: Kourtit, Karima, Nijkamp, Peter, Suzuki, Soushi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Data Envelopment Analysis; Environmental externalities; Global Power City Index; Kuznets curve; Super-efficiency; Sustainability
• ISSN: 0048-9697; 1879-1026; 1879-1026
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134963

•Urban agglomeration advantages may favour environmental quality.•The urban environmental Kuznets curve offers a ‘double’ Kuznets perspective on cities.•Bigger cities in developed nations support the environmental Kuznets curve.•Super-efficient DEA is appropriate for urban efficiency comparison.•The GPCI system provides a promising multivariate urban database. Urban agglomerations – irrespective of their size or location – may act not only as engines of economic growth, but also as vehicles of environmental and climate sustainability that may stimulate both socio-economic achievements and environmentally-benign outcomes. Clearly, the efficiency of these outcomes may differ for different types of urban agglomeration in the world. This paper aims to present and test an advanced methodology for assessing economic and sustainability-oriented performance strategies for global cities, by developing and applying a super-efficient Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. We compare 40 global cities – included in the Global Power City Index (GPCI) database – in a benchmark study in order to trace the highest-performing urban regions from both an economic and environmental-climatological efficiency perspective, by applying relevant quantitative GPCI indicators to these 40 cities. Our ultimate goal is to test what is termed the ‘delinking’ hypothesis, from the viewpoint of both economic prosperity and urban size externalities. This approach will be applied empirically by examining the GPCI data set comprised of various multi-dimensional and empirically verified indicators on economic performance and climatological-environmental conditions for the 40 global cities concerned. We regard both the size of these agglomerations and their economic welfare position as critical parameters for assessing their economic and environmental efficiency performance. In the framework of our original DEA approach, these urban areas are categorised according to 2x2 dimensions, viz. in terms of both agglomeration size (big or medium-sized) and the economic development level of the area (highly developed or developing/emerging). Our contribution serves to assess – by means of regression techniques – the highest performing agglomerations among the urban sustainability champions on the basis of the two above-mentioned assessment criteria. This approach provides the opportunity to test the so-called Kuznets sustainability curve under two different conditions, viz. agglomeration size and economi