Developing robust organizational frameworks for Sino-foreign eco-cities: comparing Sino-Dutch Shenzhen Low Carbon City with other initiatives

Abstract

Abstract Eco-city and low carbon city development enjoy high priority among a great many local governments in China. Underlying this is a host of serious environmental problems resulting from growing urbanization, industrialization and motorization. Still, political realities dictate that economic growth figures cannot be compromised. Consequently, strong eco-city agendas are often combined with the wish to become knowledge cities. To import science and technology from abroad, collaboration is established between Chinese and foreign governments, corporations and knowledge institutes to develop cities with both ecological and knowledge features. This article aims to identify conditions for robust Sino-foreign partnerships in eco-cities. It examines how Sino-foreign initiatives are organized with their strengths and weaknesses and then construes a typology of Sino-foreign eco knowledge city initiatives. A newcomer on this stage, Shenzhen Sino-Dutch Low Carbon City, in which the authors have been personally involved as initiators and advisors, is then described in depth and compared with other Sino-foreign eco-knowledge cities in terms of its organizational stability, mechanisms for political support and the role of knowledge institutes. We conclude that initiatives where collaboration is embedded in solid frameworks of bi-national political support, public and private investment, advice and exchange are the most likely to succeed. Sino-Singaporean collaboration rests on stronger foundations than Sino-European collaboration, while among European, Swedish and Germans players at their turn have been more effective in building structural long-term relations than others.