Learning from Taiyuan: Chinese cities as urban sustainability laboratories

Abstract

This essay considers China's emerging role as a “laboratory” for innovation in achieving urban sustainability. Its purpose is to highlight, in the context of the Sino-American Symposium on Future Issues Affecting Quality of Life, aspects of Chinese urbanization which contribute to China's increasing global significance as a site for natural experiments in urban sustainability. Such experiments are relevant not only to the future quality of life in China, but also to the growing number of countries participating in development partnerships with China. The essay begins with an overview of urban sustainability and China's particular urban challenges. We then focus on three aspects of Chinese urbanization which stand out as distinct in fostering urban innovation and in serving as appropriate laboratories for the development of innovative practices in urban sustainability for the global south— the pace, scale and governance of urbanization. We use examples from the city of Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, to ground the discussion in a specific place, while acknowledging that, although Taiyuan serves well to illustrate many key points, it is only one case and cannot serve as a basis of generalization about China as a whole.