From growth coalition to development coalition: A case study of urban renewal governance transformation in Southern Area of Nanjing (SAN), China

Abstract

The context of urban development in China has undergone a remarkable transformation in the latest decade. In the course of this, the central government has gradually narrowed its early flexible policies and discretionary powers for local urban development, changing from the style featuring the growth-orientated values in the early phase to a new development concept of Urban Renewal Action highlighting plural values in the new era. Different from being promoted by the local-government-led growth coalition during the previous rapid development, Urban Renewal Action emphasizes the bottom-line constraints imposed by the central government, advocating an overall reconstruction in a combination of the renewal goals, the renewal mechanism, and the renewal objects. In this sense, urban renewal can no longer be explained only through the perspective of the growth coalition. This paper, through the re-interpretation of the urban renewal in the Southern Area of Nanjing (SAN), not only demonstrates the changes in the value context of China’s urban development in the past decade, but also proposes the development coalition, as a new approach, to decode the urban renewal governance transformation under the new development discourse in China. In the process, the central government promotes such transformation through policies and regulations while considering sustainable social development as the new goal of urban renewal locally. During this nationwide transformation, residents and intellectuals are functioning as new core members.