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would in the near future reach a level that the nature could not suffer any more, and,
therefore, the transformation of current urbanization mode into a green one will be
unavoidable. Approaching the topic from another aspect, in 1965, Wolman considered

urban or rural areas as a living landscape of a biosystem, which consists of types of
creatures and organisms, therefore, “green urbanization” is a must 127 . Studying the case
of China, Liang and Yang showed that even following the environmental Kuznets curve,
there may be, in the long run, a positive relation increasing urbanization- strengthening
economic growth- improving environmental protection 128 . Some researchers tend to
define green urbanization as an urbanization process consisting of developing “green”
components, such as “green infrastructure”, Green Belts, Transport Oriented

Development, etc.
Answering the question “how green is urbanization currently” (or at a certain time)
is very important for policy makers and officials of the governance authority of a city/
urban region. To date, answers are only going around the question, not directly. Almost
all authors described activities done and their results, effects or impacts of the activities
for green city development (or greenly urbanizing) on this development process, etc.

OECD approached the problem in another aspect: comparing and calculating the ratios
between sectors/ components of urbanization and (mobility, buildings, natural resources
management, energy, green services, pollution prevention) and its results/outcomes
(jobs creation, green supply and consumption, urban attractiveness) .
129
Urbanization
Urbanization is the process of the population and resource concentration in cities
and towns. It’s a context of the process of reorganizing the socio- economic space of
each country or each region in the direction of increasing the percentage of the urban

population and economical potential on the same indicators of the total country, which
is combined closely with the change of the organization model of the socio- economic
life as well as the living style of that country, region from traditional into urban one.
WB defines urbanization as “various functional and spatial transformations
needed for long term growth and development. The pace and form of urbanization are
inherently linked to the fluidity of factor markets and the provision of basic services”.

This process consists of 5 dimensional change: the economic shift, the welfare shift, the
demographic shift, the physical shift and the administrative shift 130 . In this process, the
economic shift plays the role as the baseline for the long term success of the whole

127 Abel Wolman (1965), The metabolism of cities. Scientific American,
128 W. Liang, M. Yang (2019), Urbanization, economic growth, and environmental pollution: Evidence from
China.
129 Stephen Hammer, Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Alexis Robert, Marissa Plouin (2011), “Cities and Green Growth: A
Conceptual Framework”.
130 Dean Cira (2011), Vietnam urbanization review. Technical assistance report. World Bank project.

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