Research on the Evaluation Indicator System for Climate Adaptive Cities: A Case Study of Beijing

In recent years, the issue of what kinds of policies and practices cities should adopt to strengthen their resilience and climate adaptability has aroused remarkable interest among researchers in urban and environmental studies at home and abroad. The Chinese government has conducted a series of pilot programs in building climate-adaptive cities. A sound description and evaluation of the climate adaptability of a city, regardless of the size, provides the basis for adaptation planning and decision-making. Taking Beijing as an example, the authors analyze the adaptability of its subordinate 16 districts during the 2010–2014 period by establishing an indicator system for climate adaptability. The result shows imbalanced development in terms of economic support, level of social development, natural resources, technological support and risk management capacity of the districts in Beijing. The analysis also finds that the general adaptability is consistent with the city’s functional areas, indicating that function orientation of each district exerts potential influence on its development and adaptability. The core urban area boasts prominent advantages in general adaptability as it features a sound development basis. The newly developed area, facing such pressures as weak infrastructure, shortage of natural resource, and increasingly stringent requirements for environmental governance, shows the lowest general adaptability. The municipal government of the climate adaptive city should play its leading role in building the city’s climate resilience. More specifically, this calls for forward-looking adaptation planning that is aimed at improving the resilience and general adaptability of the city by facilitating coordinated development of different districts, and strengthening the functional complementarity and coordination between the city’s central and peripheral areas.