Empirical analysis of coupling principles of ecological environment with urbanization in Xianyang City

This paper analyzed changes in environmental pollution and urbanization development to study the coupling effects of urbanization and eco-environment in Xianyang City for 1984～2004 by using economic method. The general relationship between industrial waste discharge and urbanization follows an inverted U-shaped curve. While the curve skews rightwards for industrial wastewater discharge, it skews leftwards for industrial exhaust gas, and solid waste. At present, the urbanization in Xianyang City is in the elementary stage. But when the urbanization takes off, discharge of the industrial waste will rise with increase in population and economic development. Therefore, along with urbanization, the local government should expand environmental protection and strengthen environment protection policies in order to promote energy structure transformation from coal to cleaner sources of energy; transform the economic structure from high energy consumption, emission and pollution to low energy consumption, emission and pollution; restructure industrialization from primary industry to tertiary industry with low pollution. Such policy shifts can gradually decrease the waste discharge, improve the ecological environment and harmonize the development of urbanization and the ecological environment. 