High urban population density as a facilitator of energy–environment–economy performance–development of an autoconfiguration target model in data envelopment analysis

Despite the population decline in many countries, most cities in our world still continue to grow, in both number and in size. This spatial-demographic process raises intriguing research and policy questions on urban sustainability and vitality, worldwide, including in Asia. The unprecedented increase in urban population in Japan—and all over the world—is closely associated with the magnet effect and the economic achievement of cities. It is also important to focus more precisely on the real energy–environment–economic (3E) performance of urban agglomerations. This paper aims to present and test an advanced assessment methodology for the economic and (energy and environment) sustainability-oriented performance outcomes of large cities (called ‘government-ordinance-designated cities’) in Japan. It does so by applying super efficiency (SE) data envelopment analysis (DEA). We compare 19 big cities in Japan in a quantitative benchmark study in order to trace and identify the highest-performing cities from a 3E efficiency perspective. This approach provides a novel opportunity to test a variant of the Kuznets sustainability curve under various urban population and economic conditions. We also develop a new objective target-setting model in our target oriented—distance friction minimisation (DFM) approach in DEA: namely, the autoconfiguration target (AT)—DFM model. The above-mentioned new AT-DFM model is applied to make an efficiency-improving projection for enhancing the efficiency of several big Japanese cities.