Sustainable development planning of protected areas near cities: Case study in China

The regional level is believed to be an important platform to carry out sustainable development (SD) strategies. In China, the rapid urbanization process causes city expansions. To protect environmentally sensitive areas between cities, some protected areas (PAs) have been established. This paper proposes a framework of translating general SD principles into specific practices at the regional level, particularly for the PAs. The framework is based on and illustrated by a detailed case study of the comprehensive SD planning of an environmentally sensitive area in China. A multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) technique, the analytic network process (ANP), was used to weigh the evaluation criteria and rank the proposed capital and social development projects. It was found that the framework was helpful in guiding the SD planning process and the ANP method provided insights on the interaction of various aspects of sustainability.