Abstract
ABSTRACTTraditionally, city construction in China was to follow an order guided by the Book of Rites, and city management has no independent law but relies on the traditional Lu Li legal system. Overall, their modern transition started after the Opium War, beginning with the foreign settlements and concessions, and spurred on by the Late Qing Reform for constitutionalism and a modern state legal system. From then to the 1930s, the whole nation experienced frequent wars and overlapping political powers. Local urban planning exploration was active and diverse, but the overall development path was complex. In this context, two urban planning laws were born in late 1930s. Given this complex development background, further review of knowledge dissemination and interaction is needed to clarify the formation history and concurrently analyze its meaning. Japan, which not only shared a similar modernization experience but was also one of the important sources of introduction for modern knowledge, was selected as an object of comparison. By comparing the terms used, the specific content, and development path of the respective countries’ laws, this article aims to reveal and outline the overall characteristics of how the legal system for modern planning formed in China.
Highlights
In the past two decades, the historical research on Chinese cities’ modernization has grown rapidly, especially in the fields of urban planning, historical geography, and urban history (Zhang and Wan 2018; Li and Han 2000; Cheng 2017; He 2000), mainly in the form of in-depth study of case cities and key figures
By comparing the terms used, the specific content, and development path of the respective countries’ laws, this article aims to reveal and outline the overall characteristics of how the legal system for modern planning formed in China
Inspired by Stephen Ward ‘s typology of planning borrowing, and transfer of planning ideas (Ward 2002), Patsy Healey ‘s (Healey and Upton 2010), and Watanabe’s work on interpreting the formation of Japan’s modern planning act in 1919 by international comparison (Watanabe 1993), this paper does not look into and stage the historical formation process, but compare the terms used, the specific content, and development path of the respective countries’ laws, aiming to reveal and outline the overall characteristics of how the legal system for modern planning formed in China
Summary
In the past two decades, the historical research on Chinese cities’ modernization has grown rapidly, especially in the fields of urban planning, historical geography, and urban history (Zhang and Wan 2018; Li and Han 2000; Cheng 2017; He 2000), mainly in the form of in-depth study of case cities and key figures. The promotion of case city research has enriched our understanding China’s urban modernization, but at the same time has blurred its overall characteristics. One reason is that there is no independent branch of the traditional Chinese legal system dedicated to urban planning and construction, for which reason it is not considered mainstream in the field of legal history research. Since the legal system for modern planning did influence and is a concrete reflection of the achievements and characteristics of the modernization of Chinese cities, it is clearly a fundamental issue for understanding Chinese planning history and worth further exploration
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