How Urban Governance Communities Are Constructed and Sustained: A Grounded Theory Approach

Building sustainable cities and communities is an important part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The construction and development of Urban Governance Communities is a Chinese program to respond to this goal. Drawing upon the extant national cases of innovative social governance spearheaded by People’s Daily and analogous organizations, this study elucidates the developmental process and continuous operational mechanism of urban governance community through the grounded theory (GT) approach. The explanatory framework under consideration comprises three aspects. First, it contains the precise identification and typology of traditional governance dilemmas. Secondly, it refines the core element system of “Coupling Dilemma-Cracking Path-Dependent Tools” of urban governance communities. The third objective is to provide a synopsis of the operational and developmental model of the Urban Governance Communities, which is predicated on co-construction, co-governance, and co-sharing. This model of urban governance can be selectively applied in the light of the differentiated resource endowments of the location, thus providing an operational and realistic sample for building sustainable cities and communities.