Chinese Journal of Urban and Environmental Studies

This paper proposes a conceptual framework and a strategic idea for China’s green urbanization from the perspective of ecological civilization. The existing urbanization model — whether the activities carried out in the city or the city’s organization form — is largely a product of the traditional industrial era. China must think outside the traditional industrial box and promote green urbanization based on ecological civilization which is the fundamental solution to address the unsustainable development of cities. Green urbanization is more like “building cities in (natural) parks”, rather than “building parks in existing cities”, that is, creating a prosperous economy without destroying but making full use of the natural ecological environment. This means there will be profound changes to the development concept, the activity carried out in the city, the city’s organizational logic, and the implications of the regional economy. China’s green urbanization based on ecological civilization should focus on three basic tasks and two strategies. The three tasks are to reshape the existing cities, urbanize the newly added population in a green way, and redefine the rural areas. The two key strategies are to realize green urbanization of urban clusters that account for more than 90% of the national GDP, 70% of the total population, and 30% of the land area; and to urbanize county-level areas where about 60% of the national population resides.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China’s urbanization construction has obtained remarkable achievements. Its urbanization continues to advance rapidly. The gap between different regions is constantly narrowed. City clusters have become the strategic core areas to promote urbanization and economic development. Currently, the key issue in China’s urbanization is not about the level or speed, but the quality. Tough challenges faced by China in its urbanization include: (1) granting permanent urban residency to people originally from rural areas (citizenization) is severely lagging-behind; (2) the key links in integrated urban–rural development system and mechanism are blocked and (3) the resources and environment costs in advancing urbanization are excessively high, etc. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China’s urbanization will continue to advance rapidly, but the speed will further slow down. By 2025, China’s urbanization rate is expected to reach about 65.5%, among which the eastern, central, western and northeastern regions will reach 73.0%, 63.1%, 61.2% and 66.7%, respectively. To this end, China’s urbanization should be people-centered and led by high-quality integrated urban and rural development; thus, the urbanization quality can be improved in an all-round way. It should be a path of high-quality urbanization with Chinese characteristics featuring moderate and reasonable advancing speed, effectively improved quality in citizenization, balanced and orderly urbanization pattern, deeply integrated urban and rural development, and green, healthy and sustainable development. In terms of specific measures, the government should strengthen the leading, demonstrating and radiating role of central cities and promote the formation of four-tier central city system, namely, the global central cities, national central cities, regional central cities and local central cities; plan and build 34 high-end metropolitan areas at the national level, making them the core areas of advancing new-type urbanization in the new era; accelerate the process of establishing cities, encourage the transformation of large towns into cities, and strictly control the transformation of counties into urban districts; implement differentiated policies for expanding, stable and shrinking cities and towns, respectively; connect the channels between homesteads exiting the market and collective construction land for commercial use entering the market.

This paper evaluates the low-carbon development of 176 Chinese cities in 2018 using the Low-carbon City Evaluation Indicator System developed by Research Institute for Eco-civilization, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The evaluation shows an overall improvement of low-carbon development of cities in China, with 10 cities scoring 90 points and above, and 106 cities scoring 80–89 points. From the perspective of city category, the low-carbon development scores present an order as follows: service-oriented $\mathrm{\text{cities}}>\mathrm{\text{comprehensive cities}}>\mathrm{\text{ecology}}$-prioritized $\mathrm{\text{cities}}>\mathrm{\text{industrial}}$ cities. Geologically speaking, eastern cites perform best, western cities come second and central cities come last. Of the three batches of low-carbon city pilots, the scores follow the pattern of Batch $1>\mathrm{\text{Batch}}2>\mathrm{\text{Batch}}$ 3. Most cities are characterized by high carbon consumption and reduced efforts in low-carbon management and capital investment. Finally, this paper proposes to attach more importance to low-carbon development and strengthen capacity building for low-carbon governance; intensify efforts for constructing low-carbon pilots in order to help achieve the goal of carbon emission peak during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period; and to improve the Low-carbon City Evaluation Indicator System.

According to the statement of President Xi Jinping at the general debate of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, China aims to have CO₂ emissions peak before 2030. Regions are the major units undertaking carbon emissions control. The achievement of the national emission peaking target requires the participation of all regions. However, regions still need to rationally judge their peaking targets and paths and enhance their basic capabilities while promoting carbon emissions peak. Besides, China should step up its macro-guidance for regions to peak carbon emissions in terms of top-level design, mechanisms improvement, and overall coordination.

In early 2017, China officially implemented the pilot program of the construction of climate-resilient cities in 28 regions, and these pilots have taken a series of initiatives to adapt to climate change. Based on the research and practice on climate change adaptation worldwide, this paper constructs an evaluation indicator system for climate-resilient cities with six primary indicators and 15–21 secondary indicators to assess the progress of the pilot program in a comprehensive manner. The study shows that the consciousness of climate adaptation has been strengthened, their adaptive capacity has been improved, and their climate change monitoring capacity and the basic adaptive capacity have been enhanced. Meanwhile, each pilot city has carried out unique system and mechanism innovation and international cooperation and exchange activities, but the progress is uneven, and there is still room for improvement in the overall adaptive capacity. It is recommended that a system for evaluating the progress of the climate-resilient city pilots be established as soon as possible, and that the review of the adaptation actions and highlights of the city pilots be strengthened, so as to raise the political status of the pilot areas and strengthen their consciousness of climate change adaptation.

A buildout analysis is an important methodology in land-use planning. The GIS technicalities of doing a buildout analysis tend to be the purview of professionals with a background in geographical sciences. However, it is argued that planners ought to be able to conduct buildout analysis in order to develop a better understanding of how land-use patterns could change sustainably over time depending on a community’s regulatory environment and pace of development. A state buildout analysis is compared and contrasted with buildouts conducted for two local jurisdictions on the opposite ends of Massachusetts: the towns of Amherst and Georgetown. The town of Amherst’s computations identified lower values of developable and new commercial/industrial land and 1,878 more new dwelling units than the state-led planning initiative three years earlier. In the case of Georgetown, the UMass Amherst planning consultancy identified lower values of developable land and fewer new dwelling units and 3.5 million square feet more of new commercial/industrial land than the state-led analysis. A series of implications for teaching buildout analysis in Urban and Regional Planning studio courses is presented.

Based on The CPC Central Committee’s Proposals for Formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035, this paper proposes three paths to improve China’s urbanization strategy. First, the emphasis should be shifted from demographic urbanization to farmers’ citizenization, thus clearing the barriers against free flow of population and productive factors, and advancing equal rights of urban residents so that the city benefits are equally shared. Second, the metropolitanization strategy should be implemented to eliminate scale- and location-related discrimination, promote the efficient agglomeration of population and productive factors at different levels of metropolitan areas and develop global cities and world-class urban agglomerations. Third, the strategy of building high-quality livable cities should be implemented, by following the new trend of building green, healthy, resilient, smart, innovative and compact cities, and improving place qualities.