Dynamic of Regional Planning and Sustainable Development in the Pearl River Delta, China

Since the reform and opening up, China has been embedded in global economy. As one of the fastest developing regions, the Pearl River Delta in South China has rapidly developed from an agriculture-based region to a world factory and is subsequently becoming a global innovation center. In the process of rapid development of globalization, marketization and decentralization, how the planning theory and planning concept are applied in this region? And how does the planning adapt to the needs of development to do the space regulation? This paper combs the previous regional plannings of the Pearl River Delta, analyzing how to effectively guide and reshape the sustainable development space under the background of land and space disorder. Four key conclusions emerge from this review. First, the concept of planning has been developing from incremental planning to stock planning. Second, there is a transformation of planning contents that is from building of an economy-oriented production space like industry park planning, to improving quality of the living space and providing environment-friendly ecological space such as greenway planning and quality living circle planning. Third, the upgrading of planning technological means is reflected in the change from expression of concept articles to visualization of big data. Fourth, it shows an obvious change from rigid governance to flexible and multi-scale governance.