Threatened by the huge pressure caused by climate change, low-carbon cities have become an inevitable part of urban evolution. It is essential to evaluate urban low-carbon development levels to smoothly promote the construction of low-carbon cities. This paper proposes an evaluation index system for urban low-carbon development from the points of view of economic development and social progress, energy structure and usage efficiency, living consumption, and development surroundings. A weighted sum model was also established. Selecting 12 typical Chinese cities as cases studies, an integrated evaluation was conducted based on the index system and the assessment model. The development speed and limiting factors of different cities were also analyzed. The 12 cities were ultimately classified into three groups in terms of their low-carbon development patterns by integrating all of the analysis results. Furthermore, suitable regulation and management for different patterns were suggested. This study both aids in assessing the executive effect of low-carbon city construction and helps to determine existing problems and suggest effective solutions.

Many cities around the World have established the development objective of becoming a low-carbon city. Evaluation of such a city is important for its progress. A new evaluation framework of urban low-carbon development level is proposed in this paper, which integrates synthetic evaluation based on a bottom-up idea and analytical diagnosis based on a top-down idea. Further, set pair analysis is combined for synthetic evaluation and analytical diagnosis by comparing urban low-carbon development levels of different cities, through which the comprehensive state of urban low-carbon development level can be obtained and limiting factors identified. Based on the proposed framework and set pair analysis, low-carbon development levels of 12 Chinese cities are compared. Some suggestions are provided, based on results of overall situations of urban low-carbon development level and concrete performances of various factors and specific indicators. We conclude that both synthetic evaluation and analytical diagnosis are important for evaluation of urban low-carbon development level. The proposed framework and method can be widely applied in the evaluation of different cities over a long-term period.