UPSC Members Zhang Lei, Shi Xiaodong, and Colleagues Publish in Journal of the American Planning Association, Disseminating China's Community Planner Theory and Experience

Introduction

The article "From Rational Planning to Communicative Planning: Exploring the Roles of Beijing's Community Planners" marks the third academic contribution by mainland Chinese scholars as primary authors in the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA) over the past decade. This work innovatively proposes a theoretical framework for the evolving multifaceted roles of planners in the new era, underscoring international recognition of China's theoretical and practical advancements in urban planning.

Recently, Zhang Lei (UPSC Council Member, Professor at the School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China), Shi Xiaodong (UPSC Standing Council Member, President of Beijing Municipal Institute of City Planning and Design), Liao Lu (Lecturer at the School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China), and their colleagues published their research on Beijing's community planners in JAPA (Volume 91, Issue 2). Founded in 1935 and published quarterly, JAPA is a prestigious English-language journal in the fields of urban planning, spatial governance, and urban studies. This paper represents the third scholarly achievement by mainland Chinese scholars as lead authors in the journal over the past decade, advancing theories on the transformation of planners' roles in the new era and reflecting global acknowledgment of China's planning innovations.

Amidst the urban transition toward people-centric development, inventory regeneration, and high-quality advancement, most mega-cities and large cities have initiated experiments with community (responsibility) planner systems. Unlike traditional top-down planning professionals, community planners provide specialized services to neighborhoods or sub-districts (townships), embedding themselves in local contexts to facilitate communication, collaboration, and co-governance of urban spaces. While Western planning theories often emphasize Chinese planners' technical expertise, they rarely address the unique roles of community planners. Rooted in Beijing's pioneering practices, this study critically examines the classic question of "planners' roles in pluralistic societies." Through surveys and semi-structured interviews, it explores the characteristics and determinants of planners' roles amid planning paradigm shifts. Theoretically, this study constructs a research framework to analyze the roles and functions of responsible planners from three dimensions: technical expertise, interest representation (advocacy planners), and communication/coordination (communicative planners). It also dissects the influencing factors from dimensions such as institutional design and planning education.

The research reveals that Beijing's community planners primarily operate as technical experts, with some also serving as communicative coordinators, but rarely as interest representation (advocacy planners). Both institutional design and planning education significantly shape perceptions of their roles. Notably, planning education-focused on design and spatial representation-limits role transition due to insufficient training in communication skills and systematic social research. However, the training for responsible planners and other exchange activities organized by governments, academic groups, and the community of responsible planners clearly compensate for the deficiencies in this regard within formal planning education. At the same time, the study has also identified influence mechanisms of gender and age on planners' roles that differ from those in Western traditional planning theories.

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Edited by Jiangyu Chen with reference to https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XY6BfuLlDdMFxWav7i96SQ