Overpopulation and urban sustainable development—population carrying capacity in Shanghai based on probability-satisfaction evaluation method

With the rapid and widespread urbanization, a large number of people pour into cities, which bring a series of urban diseases and directly threaten the sustainable development of the destination city. It is particularly important to reasonably measure the population carrying capacity to promote the sustainable development of cities. Therefore, based on Shanghai’s municipal data from 1985 to 2017, this paper used the probability-satisfaction method to predict the urban population carrying capacity of Shanghai in 2020. Several important findings are derived: First, there is a general pattern that the urban population carrying capacity increases as the probability-satisfaction level decreases; second, the sensitive degrees of the population carrying capacity of different constraining factors vary. The sensitive degrees of the city’s GDP, fiscal revenues and paved road areas are lower than those of other constraining factors; third, currently the number of medical practitioners, the paved road areas and the volume of waste emission are the three most important constraining factors in Shanghai. Fourth, results of the multifactor analysis reveal that when the probability-satisfaction level is equal to the ideal level, the overall population carrying capacity of Shanghai is between 17.55 million and 23.52 million; when the probability-satisfaction level research the acceptable level, the overall population carrying capacity of Shanghai is between 20.35 million and 30.12 million people. Therefore, by 2020, the Shanghai government needs to formulate well-considering population management plan according to actual resources conditions in order to achieve balanced and sustainable urban development.