Ecological Indicators 72 (2017) 225–233 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Indicators journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolind Original articles Quantifying urban ecological governance: A suite of indices characterizes the ecological planning implications of rapid coastal urbanization Yangfan Li a,∗ , Jianhui Qiu a , Bo Zhao b , Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman c,d , Antje Bruns e , Salman Qureshi f , Chen Zhang g , Yi Li a,h a Key Laboratory of Coastal and Wetland Ecosystems (Ministry of Education), College of the Environment and Ecology, Xiamen University, South Xiang’an Road, 361102 Xiamen, China b John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA c Department of Environmental Science and Technology, 1428 Anim. Sci/Agr. Eng Bldg. University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA d Cluster for Sustainability in the Built Environment, University of Maryland, Suite 1200, 5000 College Ave., College Park, MD 20740, USA e Governance & Sustainability Lab, Universität Trier, Behringstraße 21, Trier 54286, Germany f Department of Geography, Humboldt University of Berlin, Rudower Chaussee 16, Berlin 12489, Germany g State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Avenue, Nanjing 210046, China h Department of Cartography, GIS and Remote Sensing, Institute of Geography, Georg-August University of Goettingen, Goettingen, 37077, Germany a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 13 December 2015 Received in revised form 10 August 2016 Accepted 11 August 2016 Keywords: Governance Urban ecosystems Indicator-driven assessment Planning Socio-ecological system Urbanization a b s t r a c t Urban ecosystems in China have undergone a surge of rapid urbanization leading to phenomenal socio- ecological transformation. To mitigate the regional ecological and environmental impacts, cross-scale ecological governance has not been well established. This paper aims to propose an assessment frame- work to examine and understand urban ecological governance (UEG), a concept that intertwines multiple aspects such as governance, planning, and urban ecology into an integrated procedure for policy formula- tion and implementation. To test the assessment framework and thereby derive a quantitative approach to studying socio-ecological couplings within the urban systems, we choose Lianyungang, a rapid urbaniz- ing coastal city in China for an empirical study. We ascertain each subsystem (e.g., urbanization, ecological, governance) presents a fluctuating trend particularly after 2005. Also, the overall trends of UEG increased slightly during the two study periods (1997–2012 and 2005–2012), mainly due to the influences of the Urban Master Plan and Eastern Coastal Regional Development Strategic Planning of Lianyungang. These results imply that the UEG in China’s local governments is unique, and the planning system especially acts a core player to cope with increasing regional ecological risks and uncertainties. It is suggested that China’s UEG needs to enhance experimental governance, ecological redline policy (ERP) and multi-plan integration and combine its current government-dominant top-down system with Western bottom-up decision-making mechanisms. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Governance is a broad notion that captures both the (non- )organizational structures and (in)formal processes that shape interactions of various actors in decision-making arenas (Young, 2003). In the past decade, great attention has been drawn to gov- ernance in the context of environment and climate, including environmental and ecological risk assessment (Benn et al., 2009; ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: yangf@xmu.edu.cn (Y. Li). Xu and Liu, 2009), social-ecological systems (Koontz et al., 2015; Aburto et al., 2014), resilience (Boyd et al., 2015; Garmestani and Benson, 2013), ecosystem services (Turner et al., 2014; Rathwell and Peterson, 2012; Kenward et al., 2011), and ecosystem based management (Barbier et al., 2008; Metcalf et al., 2014; Wu et al., 2013). The term “environmental governance” focuses on environmental issues, such as water pollution, or air pollution, environmental impacts and resources (Mol, 2009; Tiwari and Joshi, 2015), while the term “ecosystem governance” brings in notions of ecosystem processes and the interrelatedness and interdepen- dence of different systems, mainly dealing with ecosystem issues like forests, wetlands (Knol, 2011). Unlike these two, the term http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.08.021 1470-160X/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.