City Planning Review（2021.12）

♦ Discipline

Author:SHI Nan

♦ GREEN TRANSFORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CHINA’S URBANIZATION

Author: WANG Kai

ABATRACT: In the past 40 years since the reform and opening-up, China has realized an urbanization with the largest scale in the world, which is a remarkable achievement. Under the condition of tight resource and energy constraints, China’s urbanization development still suffers from high resource consumption, high energy consumption, and high carbon emission. At the same time, the “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality” goals also face the challenges brought about by the promoted level of urbanization, the steady economic development and the modernization. Under the background of ecological civilization construction, China’s has entered a new stage of green urbanization development, which is an inevitable choice for the transformation and development of the “second half” of China’s urbanization. Therefore, on the basis of the understanding of green urbanization, the study combines the five major aspects of carbon emission, including energy, industry, transportation, construction, agriculture and land use, and takes “carbon reduction” and “increasing carbon sinks” as the main technological line to explore the planning technology system of green urbanization and its matching system innovation from five perspectives, which are urban pattern, communication and travel, green building, infrastructure, and urban operation. 

KEYWORDS: urbanization; green transformation; planning technology; ecological civilization

♦ THOUGHTS ON AN INTEGRATED URBAN-RURAL DEVELOPMENT PATH ON PROVINCIAL SCALE IN THE NEW ERA: A CASE STUDY ON JIANGSU PROVINCE

Author: ZHANG Wei; L Hai; HU Jianshuang; GUO Zijian

ABSTRACT: China is now in an important transitional period from breaking down the urban-rural dual structure to moving towards urban-rural integration. Against this backdrop, this paper summarizes the related theory of integrated urban-rural development and conducts a case study on Jiangsu Province in the coastal area of eastern China, with the highest urbanization level and significant regional development differences in its southern, middle, and northern areas. The paper puts forward an integrated urban-rural development path on the provincial scale in the new era that can be summarized as “regional integration, differentiation guiding, feature priority, policy assignment” based on reviewing and summarizing the evolution process of the urban-rural relations in Jiangsu Province and its main practices, achievements, and experiences, as well as challenges to regional urban-rural integration, rational allocation of urban-rural spatial resources, and explorations on the values of rural areas. Then, it puts forward four detailed practical suggestions, namely actively establishing a regional linkage development and regional compensation mechanism; choosing differentiated county-wide integrated urban-rural development path according to the characteristics of different regions; building different integrated urban-rural development demonstration areas for the regions with better resources background; and strengthening the innovation mechanism to improve the integrated urban-rural development system. It aims to provide practical experience for China to explore an integrated urban-rural development path and to provide a reference for other provinces. 

KEYWORDS: urban-rural relation; integrated urban-rural development; new urbanization; rural revitalization

♦ ENTROPY MODELS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS IN URBAN STUDIES

Author: LIU Lingbo；PENG Zhenghong；WU Hao

ABSTRACT: Cities are complex adaptive systems, and there are a lot of uncertain problems in urban studies. Entropy models provide solutions to these uncertainties in the quantitative study on such complex urban systems. Based on literature review on entropy models in urban studies, this paper introduces the entropy index model, the maximum entropy model, and the entropy probability model, as well as their corresponding applications in urban studies. In addition, with the revision of Batty’s spatial entropy model, the paper mainly discusses the generalized spatial entropy, and also proposes the local spatial entropy models. The paper concludes that entropy models provide both theoretical and technical supports for the study on complex urban systems, and Sociophysics 2.0 represented by entropy theory will have broad application potential in the research paradigm of new science of cities. 

KEYWORDS：entropy model; maximum entropy; spatial entropy; urban system; research paradigm; Sociophysics

♦ A STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF COMPREHENSIVE IMPROVEMENT OF URBAN VILLAGES ON THE HOUSING SATISFACTION OF TENANTS: THE CASE OF SHENZHEN

Author: TONG De; GU Chunxia

ABSTRACT: Abandoning large-scale demolition and reconstruction, the comprehensive improvement of urban villages integrates auxiliary facilities, functional changes and partial demolition, which has gradually become an important tool of urban renewal. Based on the data of housing satisfaction survey of four urban villages in Shenzhen and applying ordered logistic regression model, this paper investigates the influence of urban village improvement and different improvement patterns on the housing satisfaction of tenants. The results show that: (1) the comprehensive improvement of urban villages significantly increases the housing satisfaction of the tenants in properties under improvement, but has limited effect on the other properties in the village under improvement, and has no effect on surrounding villages; (2) the government-led improvement pattern leads to greater increase in housing satisfaction than the market-led pattern; (3) centralized improvement brings greater improvement in housing satisfaction than decentralized improvement. These results suggest that the government should increase the investment in public facilities, enlarge the range of improvement projects, and maximize the positive influence. Moreover, the planning of village improvement should pay attention to the integration of separated properties, improve the community quality during physical renewal, and give full play to the scale effect of comprehensive improvement. 

KEYWORDS: urban village; comprehensive improvement; housing satisfaction; Shenzhen

♦ SPATIAL JUSTICE OF PUBLIC SERVICE FACILITIES BASED ON SOCIAL STRATIFICATION: A CASE STUDY OF THE CENTRAL URBAN AREA OF LANZHOU

Author: ZHANG Zhibin; CHEN Long; DA Xiaojun; DONG Jianhong

ABSTRACT: The accessibility of urban public service facilities under social stratification and the spatial justice of residents’ enjoyment of public services are of great significance to the realization of equalization of basic public services, fair planning, and harmonious society. Taking Lanzhou City as an example, we obtain the data of commercial housing residential neighborhoods and public service facilities in the central city through web crawler tools, use hierarchical cluster analysis to divide residential neighborhoods into different social groups, then apply ArcGIS fishnet tools to divide the research units into 273 spatial units, and then build a model to identify the attributes of different social groups in different spatial units and calculate the spatial accessibility and social justice of public service facilities within different groups. The results show that: (1) the distribution of social groups shows a concentric structure with “the high-income group in central area and the low-income group in the peripheral area”; (2) different social groups have significantly different access to public services, with the middle-income group having the strongest access to public services and the poverty-stricken group the weakest; (3) the social groups with public service facilities are, in descending order, the elite, the middle-income group, the low-income group, and the poverty-stricken group, with the elite having a clear advantage, and the further away from the city center, the more sparse the distribution is, with a significant “core-periphery” characteristic; (4) the spatial justice of public service facilities is, in descending order, the elite, the middle-income group, the low-income group, and the poverty-stricken group, and the gap between the rich and the poor in terms of access to public service resources is huge. On the whole, spatial justice and social equity are also clearly “weakened” at the periphery. 

KEYWORDS: social groups; public facilities; spatial justice; social equity; Lanzhou City

♦ INDICATORS FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION TRAVEL UNDER BIG EXTERNAL SHOCK

Author: ZHOU Jiangping

ABSTRACT：The COVID-19 is the most tremendous external shock (pandemic) encountered by the mankind in the past 100 years or so. The shock produces massive, long-lasting, and wide-ranging impacts on work and life in urban and rural areas. We must revisit our past and existing knowledge, experience, method and performance measures concerning public transportation planning, policy, and management so as to better guide related practice and research amid and after the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper proposes a new ideological framework consisting of four key concepts: travel stability, change, resilience, and recovery. It also introduces eight indicators or visuals to operationalise the framework. It illustrates those indicators and visuals based on empirical data from Beijing and Hong Kong. 

KEYWORDS：external shock; impact; public transportation travel; ideological framework; indicator

♦ GOVERNMENT COORDINATION AND CONTIGUOUS DEVELOPMENT: THE EXPLORATION AND INNOVATION OF DISTRICT OVERALL RENEWAL PLANNING IN SHENZHEN

Author: LAN Wenlong; DUAN Jin; YANG Boyu; LI Jiayu; JIANG Ying

ABSTRACT: Previous research on urban spatial identity is usually based on experts’ perspective, while this paper emphasizes that the public is the main perceiving subject of urban spatial identity. Through the description and analysis of the public perception mechanism of urban identity, this paper creates the evaluation index system with identifiability, aesthetic attribute, meaning, vitality, and activity support as the content, and proposes the indicator quantification method of quantitative analysis of environmental attributes, data collection of public behavior, and environment-behavior coupling analysis, based on which the public perception-oriented evaluation model of urban spatial identity is constructed. Through the application in Wuhan’s main urban areas, the new model solves the bottleneck issue of the lack of public perception in the evaluation of urban spatial identity and the difficulty in guiding planning decision, and it provides technical support for coping with the urban identity crisis in the process of rapid urbanization in China. 

KEYWORDS: public perception; urban spatial identity evaluation; environment-behavior studies; urban design; Wuhan

♦ “WEI” IN THE CITY PLANNING OF EARLY CHINA

Author: GUO Lu

ABSTRACT: “Wei” is an important concept in the planning of the early Chinese cities, which has been involved in a lot of related literature. The research on the connotation and evolution of “Wei” is of great significance to the study of the early Chinese cities and their planning. Three representative expositions about “Wei” in the Book of Documents, the Rites of Zhou, and the Rhapsody of Western Capital are selected in this paper. The different characteristics of the city and its planning in the Western Zhou Dynasty, the Warring States period, and the Western Han Dynasty are analyzed by exploring the different meanings of “Wei”. On this basis, through the comparison of the concepts, it is found that the cities and their plans in this period have distinct commonalities, that is, the city is the political core and the representation of political power, and the planning is a means of political governance. At the same time, the capital and its planning in different texts have distinct marks of time, which are the direct products of the form of political power organization in that era. 

KEYWORDS: Wei; planning history; early China; conceptual history

♦ RESEARCH ON DEVELOPMENT CONTROL PROCESS BASED ON ACTOR-RELATIONAL APPROACH

Author: PANG Xiaomei; ZHOU Jianyun; CAI Xiaobo; QI Dongjin; SU Zhangna

ABSTRACT: Development control is an important part of planning implementation. The planning management in China emphasizes the role of “regulatory planning-permission” as rigid stipulation, tries to replace development control with planning, and neglects that the permission process is characterized by interests gaming and coordination between multiple stakeholders. In addition, guided by the concept of sustainable development, ecological environment and other factors influencing planning decision-making should to be involved in the development control process as “non-human” participants, rather than relying on the “government” that is assumed to be an agent of public interests, not to mention that the role of local governments under the tax system is more in line with the “economic man” hypothesis. In this context, the research of development control needs a new theoretical framework. This paper integrates the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the Urban Regime Theory (URT) into the “Actor-Relational Approach” to analyze the program structure of development control. Taking the objective and method of development control as a basis, the paper generalizes the permission process of development control into four procedural stages and summarizes its key features. For each procedural stage, the relevant human actors and non-human participants are identified to establish the actor-network structure of development control. The research of development control program structure can provide theoretical guidance and reference framework for the implementation of territorial and spatial planning and the reform of development control system in China. 

KEYWORDS: actor-network; urban regime; development control; permission process

♦ IMPACT OF URBAN FUNCTION ON THE INDICES OF URBAN CONSTRUCTION LAND: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF URBAN CONSTRUCTION LAND AREA PER CAPITA AND PROPORTION OF INDUSTRIAL LAND

Author: ZHANG Yanji; LIN Gaozhi

ABSTRACT: The current planning standards of development land have mainly followed the means of “single control”. However, except population scale and climate zone, other factors affecting urban land use have not been considered until now. Therefore, taking 268 cities at the prefecture level or above as research object, this study aims to reveal the relationship between the functional index of 36 industrial sectors and urban development land area per capita, industrial land area per capita and the proportion of industrial land area. Via regressive analysis, this research demonstrates that urban function is the critical factor to determine urban construction land area per capita, urban industrial land area per capita and the proportion of industrial land area in urban construction land. Furthermore, the relative influence of urban function has exceeded the variables involved in the existing standard. Different kinds of secondary and tertiary industry departments have diverse demand intensity degrees for land input. Therefore, to predict the amount of land use and modify the existing planning standard of urban construction land, the urban land use index of specific city should be allowed to flexibly increase or decrease according to the functional standardized index of key industry departments, so as to improve the scientific level and enforceability of master planning. 

KEYWORDS: urban function; per capita index; urban construction land; industrial land

♦ INTERCITY COMMUTING IN CHINA’S METROPOLITAN AREA: THE CASE OF BEIJING-TIANJIN INTERCITY HIGH-SPEED RAILWAY

Author: LIN Xiongbin; LU Yuan

ABSTRACT: Along with the in-depth implementation of the strategy of strengthening transportation and building an interconnected transportation network, intercity commuting in metropolitan areas is currently becoming a new trend in the spatial context of the continuous improvement of intercity railway services and the rising cost of living in the core cities of metropolitan areas. To analyze the scale and influencing factors associated with intercity commuting would provide a new perspective for promoting high-speed transit-oriented territorial planning and regional economic integration. This paper selects Beijing-Tianjin intercity High-Speed Railway (HSR) as an example to understand the characteristics of intercity commuting behavior between Beijing and Tianjin. In particular by using a binary logistic regression model, it attempts to understand the impacts of a variety of relevant factors on individuals’ spatial choice of residence or employment beyond municipalities. The findings of this study reveal that (1) the proportion of Beijing-Tianjin intercity commuting is about 7%; (2) individuals’ socio-economic attributes, the convenient transfer of intercity and intercity transport system, intercity travel cost, individuals’ travel preferences, and willingness to relocate can affect the intercity commuting choice; (3) even taking the controlling variables into account, the factors related to intercity travel cost, the convenience of traffic transfer, and willingness to relocate, represent significant for the choice of intercity commuting in the metropolitan areas. Facing the demand of territorial planning, these conclusions may provide some policy implications for the optimization of public service supply system in metropolitan areas, intercity public transportation planning, and regional integrated development. 

KEYWORDS: transportation planning; travel behavior; intercity commuting; Beijing-Tianjin metropolitan area

♦ A STUDY OF GREENWAY NETWORK CONSTRUCTION IN THE HISTORIC AREA OF GUANGZHOU

Author: LI Minzhi; WENG Xuanying; ZHAO Xiaoying

ABSTRACT: Greenway planning and construction has encountered many challenges in the historic area of Guangzhou, such as the high-density built environment, rich historical heritage, and tight land resources. At the beginning of the study, the concept and characteristics of greenway in the historic area are clarified and its current situation and problems in Guangzhou are deeply studied. Secondly, the framework of “Greenway Network Suitability Index System” is proposed, which is then analyzed and modified via the tools of Cost Connectivity and Cost Distance to establish a short-term and medium- and long-term network. Finally, the network structure index is used to verify the greenway network planning, and the result shows that it has obvious optimization effect on the current greenway system. On this basis, the planning and design strategies are proposed. This study is aimed to provide guidance for greenway planning and construction in historic area of Guangzhou and similar areas through quantitative evaluation and system construction. 

KEYWORDS: historic area of Guangzhou; greenway; Suitability Index System; process-based approach; network construction