IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v12y2020i12p5179-d376078.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

New Town Development and Sustainable Transition under Urban Entrepreneurialism in China

Author

Listed:
  • Yun Song

    (Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, 2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands)

  • Dominic Stead

    (Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, 2628 BL Delft, The Netherlands)

  • Martin de Jong

    (Rotterdam School of Management and Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
    Institute for Global Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China)

Abstract

New towns are a major form of urban growth in China. In recent years, increasing numbers of large new town projects have been planned and built in and around existing cities. These new town projects have frequently been employed by city governments as central elements of pro-growth strategies, based on ideas of urban entrepreneurialism, which seek to promote economic growth, project a dynamic city image, and increase urban competitiveness. This article studies how the pro-growth, urban entrepreneurial approach affects the planning and development of Chinese megacities. A conceptual framework focusing on land-leasing revenue and new town development strategies is employed to explore the linkages between urban growth mechanisms and urban outcomes. Empirical material from four cities in the Pearl River Delta—Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, and Zhuhai—is presented. The analysis indicates that new town developments in these cities have different levels of dependency on spatial expansion and land revenue, and emphasize different issues of sustainable development in their plans. Cities with a lower dependency on physical and economic growth are be more likely to emphasize the quality of the built environment and address issues of sustainable urban development more closely when planning and implementing new town projects.

Suggested Citation

  • Yun Song & Dominic Stead & Martin de Jong, 2020. "New Town Development and Sustainable Transition under Urban Entrepreneurialism in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-20, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:12:p:5179-:d:376078
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/12/5179/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/12/5179/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Cheshire, 1999. "Cities in Competition: Articulating the Gains from Integration," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 36(5-6), pages 843-864, May.
    2. Li, Hongbin & Zhou, Li-An, 2005. "Political turnover and economic performance: the incentive role of personnel control in China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1743-1762, September.
    3. Meiling Han & Martin De Jong & Zhuqing Cui & Limin Xu & Haiyan Lu & Baiqing Sun, 2018. "City Branding in China’s Northeastern Region: How Do Cities Reposition Themselves When Facing Industrial Decline and Ecological Modernization?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-25, January.
    4. Fulong Wu, 2016. "China's Emergent City-Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State-orchestrated Rescaling," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1134-1151, November.
    5. Jiang Xu & Anthony G.O. Yeh, 2005. "City Repositioning and Competitiveness Building in Regional Development: New Development Strategies in Guangzhou, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 283-308, June.
    6. Jieming Zhu, 2004. "Local developmental state and order in China's urban development during transition," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 424-447, June.
    7. Francesca Governa & Angelo Sampieri, 2020. "Urbanisation processes and new towns in contemporary China: A critical understanding from a decentred view," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(2), pages 366-382, February.
    8. Hsing, You-tien, 2010. "The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199568048.
    9. Martin de Jong, 2019. "From Eco-Civilization to City Branding: A Neo-Marxist Perspective of Sustainable Urbanization in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-14, October.
    10. Fei Chen, 2016. "The design dimension of China's planning system: urban design for development control," International Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 81-100, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Batara Surya & Hadijah Hadijah & Seri Suriani & Baharuddin Baharuddin & A. Tenri Fitriyah & Firman Menne & Emil Salim Rasyidi, 2020. "Spatial Transformation of a New City in 2006–2020: Perspectives on the Spatial Dynamics, Environmental Quality Degradation, and Socio—Economic Sustainability of Local Communities in Makassar City, Ind," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-50, September.
    2. Naji Akbar & Ismaila Rimi Abubakar & Adel Saleh Bouregh, 2020. "Fostering Urban Sustainability through the Ecological Wisdom of Traditional Settlements," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-19, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hyun Bang Shin, 2014. "Urban spatial restructuring, event-led development and scalar politics," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(14), pages 2961-2978, November.
    2. Fulong Wu, 2016. "China's Emergent City-Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State-orchestrated Rescaling," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1134-1151, November.
    3. Zhigao Liu & Jiayi Zhang & Oleg Golubchikov, 2019. "Edge-Urbanization: Land Policy, Development Zones, and Urban Expansion in Tianjin," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-16, May.
    4. Mengzhu Zhang & Si Qiao & Xiang Yan, 2021. "The secondary circuit of capital and the making of the suburban property boom in postcrisis Chinese cities," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(6), pages 1331-1355, September.
    5. Loraine Kennedy, 2017. "State restructuring and emerging patterns of subnational policy-making and governance in China and India," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(1), pages 6-24, February.
    6. Ding, Chengri & Niu, Yi & Lichtenberg, Erik, 2014. "Spending preferences of local officials with off-budget land revenues of Chinese cities," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 265-276.
    7. Outi Luova, 2020. "Local environmental governance and policy implementation: Variegated environmental education in three districts in Tianjin, China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(3), pages 490-507, February.
    8. Ya Zhao & Lennon H. T. Choy & Kwong Wing Chau, 2023. "Political Circles and Land Supply for the Service and Industrial Sectors: Evidence from 284 Cities in China," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-16, February.
    9. Xing Su & Zhu Qian, 2020. "State Intervention in Land Supply and Its Impact on Real Estate Investment in China: Evidence from Prefecture-Level Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-15, January.
    10. Anthony Gar-On Yeh & Zifeng Chen, 2020. "From cities to super mega city regions in China in a new wave of urbanisation and economic transition: Issues and challenges," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(3), pages 636-654, February.
    11. Jin, Wanfu & Zhou, Chunshan & Zhang, Guojun, 2020. "Characteristics of state-owned construction land supply in Chinese cities by development stage and industry," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    12. George CS Lin & Xun Li & Fiona F Yang & Fox ZY Hu, 2015. "Strategizing urbanism in the era of neoliberalization: State power reshuffling, land development and municipal finance in urbanizing China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(11), pages 1962-1982, August.
    13. Xingjian Liu, 2020. "Assessing airport ground access by public transport in Chinese cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(2), pages 267-285, February.
    14. Karita Kan, 2019. "Accumulation without Dispossession? Land Commodification and Rent Extraction in Peri‐urban China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 633-648, July.
    15. Haiyan Lu & Martin De Jong & Yawei Chen, 2017. "Economic City Branding in China: the Multi-Level Governance of Municipal Self-Promotion in the Greater Pearl River Delta," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-24, March.
    16. Cai, Meina & Murtazashvili, Ilia & Murtazashvili, Jennifer, 2020. "The politics of land property rights," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 151-167, April.
    17. Qingke Yang & Xuejun Duan & Lei Wang, 2017. "Spatial–Temporal Patterns and Driving Factors of Rapid Urban Land Development in Provincial China: A Case Study of Jiangsu," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-15, December.
    18. Xuanyi Nie, 2023. "The ‘medical city’ and China’s entrepreneurial state: Spatial production under rising consumerism in healthcare," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(6), pages 1102-1122, May.
    19. Fu, Yang & Zhang, Xiaoling, 2018. "Two faces of an eco-city? Sustainability transition and territorial rescaling of a new town in Zhuhai," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 627-636.
    20. Fulong Wu, 2018. "Planning centrality, market instruments: Governing Chinese urban transformation under state entrepreneurialism," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(7), pages 1383-1399, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:12:p:5179-:d:376078. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.