Quantitative Evaluation of the Uncertainties in the Coordinated Development of Urban Human Settlement Environment and Economy: Taking Changsha City as an Example

The human settlement environment problem has become a new focus on urban studies at home and abroad. Sustainable development of urban human settlement is the ultimate target of modern city construction and development. The coordinated development of human settlement and economy is of vital significance to urban sustainable development and urban ecosystem health. It is necessary to review its development and evaluate its coordinating degree. Urban human settlements and economic systems exist in urban ecosystems, which are a structural complexity. Therefore the research is being challenged by some uncertain factors between human settlements and economic systems. More and more attentions have been paid to the researches and the applications of the research result to the human settlement, eco-city and urban sustainable development. However most of the researches were focused on its determinate objective aspects and qualitative analyses while less concern on the quantitative evaluation of coordinated development of urban human settlement environment and economy, especially little on its uncertain aspect. At present, the urgent task is to study the coordinated development of urban settlement and economy in terms of the effect of uncertainty. This paper analyzed the uncertain characteristics, which would be confronted at different stages, such as confirming the index categories, their bound values, and their construction rate, etc. According to the actual urban conditions, many construction principles based on uncertainties were put forward and an indicating system for human settlement and economic evaluation was established. Moreover, the application of fuzzy mathematics presented a new method and a calculation model for the comprehensive assessment of the coordinated development of urban human settlement and economy. The application of the method and model in Changsha city of Hunan Province showed that the assessment results could reflect not only the overall coordinating degree of the city, but also the model of interactive mechanism between urban economic systems and human settlement.