Evaluation of Smart Growth of a City Based on Entropy Weight and Gray Relational Analysis - Using Suzhou and Saint Louis as Examples

Smart growth is about helping every town and city become a more economically prosperous, socially equitable, and environmentally sustainable place to live. How to evaluate the success of smart growth of a city plays an important role in construction and development of a city. By construing the evaluation system of smart growth city, this paper measures the success of smart growth of two citiesSuzhou and Saint Louisfrom 2010 to 2015 based on entropy weight and gray relational analysis methods, and using smart growth principles develops growth plans for both cities over the next few decades. Moreover, we find that the indexes of economy and community of Suzhou continue to increase while its environment begins to become worse and worse from 2012. For Saint Louis, the indexes of community and environment remain growth and the economy is ups and downs. Nevertheless, the current growth plans of both cities are successful as a whole. Furthermore, the plan of smart growth of Suzhou is far more successful than that of Saint Louis.