Chinese Urban Development Research Articles

Green finance: The catalyst for artificial intelligence and energy efficiency in Chinese urban sustainable development

For a prolonged period, Chinese cities have been developing through high-investment and low-efficiency urbanization, posing a serious threat to urban sustainable development. In recent years, green finance (GF) has been recognized as a potential catalyst for fostering urban green economy and promoting urban sustainable development. This study thus explores whether GF stimulates artificial intelligence (AI) and energy efficiency (EE), thereby contributing to urban sustainable development. Leveraging 282 Chinese cities' datasets from 2014 to 2019, this study yields the following conclusions. This study evidences that GF contributes to the enhancement of the Chinese urban AI level. This conclusion holds true even when alternative measurements are considered, the instrumental variable (IV) method is employed, the interference of the GF policies is eliminated, the municipality samples are excluded, and doubly debiased Lasso regression is carried out. Additionally, the study highlights that the beneficial influence of GF on AI is notably significant in eastern and central cities, non-resource-dependent cities, cities with a population under 5 million, and low AI-level cities. Furthermore, this study demonstrates the positive effect of GF on EE and its spatial spillover effects. These findings help reinforce the role of GF in advancing urban sustainable development through enhancements in AI and EE.

Spatial quality measurement of commercial streets in old cities of medium-sized cities in China

ABSTRACT Chinese urban development has entered the stage of stock planning, and as an important part of urban public space, the construction of street space has a direct impact on urban development. High-quality street space contributes to sustainable urban development.High-quality street spaces are highly important for constructing vibrant and sustainable cities. Taking Jiaozuo city, a medium-sized city, as an example, this article establishes an evaluation index system for commercial street space quality from the aspects of external characterization and objective material space and uses the Pearson correlation coefficient to explore the influencing factors of urban commercial street space quality. This study finds that (1) crowd activities on commercial streets have different temporal and spatial patterns on weekdays and days off; (2) the external characterization of urban street space quality has a significant positive correlation with objective material spatial elements such as the density of public transportation stops, functional density, functional mixing, interface continuity, and spatial green visibility rate; (3) the enhancement of street accessibility and fine-tuning of functions are key to improving the spatial quality of commercial streets.This study provides theoretical basis and ideas for improving the spatial quality of commercial streets in medium-sized cities in China and promoting sustainable urban development.

Urban Growth and Its Ecological Effects in China

As the largest developing nation, China is currently experiencing rapid urban growth. Conducting a thorough scientific assessment of this expansion and its ecological consequences is of paramount importance for advancing China’s ecological civilization and aligning with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. This study employs multi-source remote sensing data to investigate the spatiotemporal trends in Chinese urban development and explore its impact on the ecological environment. From 2013 to 2021, the findings indicate an increasing trend in China’s total nocturnal light, with the southern and central regions exhibiting higher growth rates. This suggests a decade-long expansion of Chinese cities, especially in the southern and central regions. However, the impact of urban expansion on ecological quality varies. Beijing, Shenyang, and Xi’an have witnessed improved environmental quality, while Kunming and Shenzhen have experienced minimal changes, and Hefei and Wuhan have encountered a decline. The observed spatial heterogeneity underscores the intricate relationship between urban expansion and ecological shifts. This study reveals the spatiotemporal dynamics of China’s urban expansion and its ecological impact, providing valuable insights and policy recommendations for fostering the harmonized development of urbanization and ecological preservation.

Application of the Sustainable Sites Initiative Rating System in Urban Green Space Construction in China—The Case of Xuhui Runway Park

The Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) is a comprehensive evaluation system for sustainable landscape, which has been promoted successfully and widely recognized in the landscape architecture industry. However, the existing research lacks attention to the applicability of SITES to urban green space construction projects in China. Therefore, exploring the application of the SITES evaluation system in the context of Chinese urban green space development is of great importance. Building upon theoretical research on sustainable landscapes, this study focuses on urban green space projects as the research carrier, with SITES as the subject of investigation. Utilizing the case study method, a thorough description and analysis of Xuhui Runway Park, a representative case officially certified by SITES in China, is provided. Across four stages—project initiation and planning, scheme design, construction, and operation—this study discusses the approaches employed in Chinese urban green space projects to meet the requirements of the SITES evaluation system. By evaluating the applicability of SITES to Chinese urban green space projects, identifying limitations in system promotion, and offering references for sustainable design practices, this study advances the application and promotion of SITES in China and contributes to the sustainable development of the landscape architecture industry.

Floating hutongs life to diminishing Confucian courtyard narratives in Jinan, China

ABSTRACT Confucianism has shaped traditional Chinese urban patterns and sustainable housing development, resulting in a fusion of architectural styles across China and neighbouring regions. As previous research has focused on the physical and environmental aspects of sustainable urban environments and housing, the evolution of spatial narratives has been overlooked. This study explores the significance and influence of Confucian narratives in urban streets and juxtaposed courtyard houses, specifically in the Mingfucheng area of Jinan, Shandong Province. By employing a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews with residents, the study explores architecture and hutong spaces. The findings highlight the positive impact of Confucian concepts on residents’ lives, spatial behaviour, and spirituality. It also addresses the challenges and opportunities in the process of urbanisation and rural revitalisation. This research provides a narratological perspective on the sustainability of culturally influenced traditional architecture, contributes to the knowledge on courtyards and hutongs, and suggests sustainable strategies for architectural culture and heritage conservation.

Heritage-Based Spatial Form Consideration: Western Urban Planning Concepts Used in Chinese Urban (Dalian) Development

Dalian, a typical modern colonial city, originated in the late 19th century and was planned and built by Russian architects. Academics have traditionally focused on the unique qualities of the spatial form from the early stages of urban development, but due to a lack of urban history archives, the formation of the spatial form and the planning ideology of this time have not been examined. For this study, we visited the Russian State Historical Archives to search for relevant materials to restore the process of forming Dalian’s spatial form. Based on this, the heritage value and attributes of Dalian’s modern urban spatial form are discussed. The results show that, although Dalian was always under the control of Russian political power at the early stage of its urban construction, the urban planning ideas were integrated with modern Western urban planning ideas. Secondly, under the influence of modern Western urban planning ideas, including “classicalism” and the “garden city”, the modern Dalian urban space gradually formed a unique form and appearance, bearing the brand of the times and urban memory in a special context. Moreover, this study finds that the evolution of urban space is not simply a cumulative development of itself but the result of the influence of external ideas implanted with unique heritage values and attributes.

Religion in the Folded City: Origami and the Boundaries of the Chronotope

AbstractIn this article we rethink the chronotope approach by examining what happened to religious space-times in a Chinese urban development project that completely transformed what had once been five relatively rural townships. What happens to chronotopes when a place is so completely transformed? We focus on multiple chronotopic dimensions in the religious experience of those villagers whose families had long occupied this land, but who now live separated from their old neighbors, without their old livelihoods, having lost their old temples, and surrounded by new migrants who are generally wealthier and better educated. Building on recent anthropological work on chronotopes, coupled with insights taken from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, this article explores the complex interrelationships and workings of chronotopes through the idea of the fold. This approach reconsiders what the boundaries between chronotopes might look like—not necessarily straight lines that are difficult to cross, but more like the infinite inflections of curves as those curves intersect and interact with each other. Rather than thinking of chronotopes as structured wholes separated by clear boundaries—much as we also tend to think about “states,” “cultures,” or “ontologies”—folding allows us to reconceptualize the kinds of interactions that take place when one space-time touches another. We examine in particular three ways in which folding elucidates how chronotopic boundaries can work: they can make the distant near, separate inside from outside, and complicate the boundary by interdigitating.

Crowd E-Home—A Crowd-Based Collaborative Decoration Platform

With the rapid development of Chinese urbanization and industrialization level, the Chinese real estate transaction area continues to grow, and the country's decoration industry is expanding. Due to the rapid expansion, the decoration industry has failed to establish a good industry order, and the current decoration industry has many problems, such as opaque information and low industrial efficiency. Traditional and Internet decoration companies have failed to solve these problems effectively. The purpose of this study is to build a new collaborative decoration platform to solve the shortcomings of the decoration industry and promote its healthy development. A crowd-based collaborative decoration platform called Crowd E-home is proposed. Based on the Building Information Modeling (BIM) of houses, the platform constructs collaborative intelligent digital models, which have the characteristics of evolution, coordination, multifaceted, and initiative. These models act as intermediate coordinators to complete the collaborative division of labor. This platform plays a role in matching multiparty transactions among consumers, designers, construction teams, material suppliers, and supervisors to solve the problem of the huge coordination costs of traditional decoration companies. It also breaks the space-time limit of consumer selection during the decoration process, improves the decision-making power of consumers, and meets consumer needs for personalized services. The collaborative concept of the platform and the application of BIM optimize the existing decoration industry chain, which transforms the traditional chain model into a star-shaped decoration closed-loop ecosystem.

Simulation on the Evolution Trend of the Urban Sprawl Spatial Pattern in the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River, China.

Urban sprawl has become the main pattern of spatial expansion in many large cities in China, and its ecological and environmental effects profoundly impact Chinese urban development. In this paper, nighttime light data and statistical yearbook data are adopted as basic data sources to simulate the evolution trend of the urban sprawl in the upper Yangtze River (UYR), China. First, the urban sprawl index (USI) is employed to assess the level of urban sprawl and to determine the characteristics of urban sprawl under different scales. Second, the spatial autocorrelation model is applied to reveal the spatial pattern change characteristics of urban sprawl from 1992 to 2015. Third, a scenario analysis model of urban sprawl is constructed to simulate the evolution trend of the urban sprawl under different scenarios. Finally, based on the Geodetector, the influence of factors and factor interactions influencing urban sprawl in different time periods is analyzed. The results yield the following main conclusions: (1) The urban sprawl in the UYR first intensifies and then stabilizes over time. The number of cities with high USI in Sichuan province, medium cities, and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration increases over time, indicating that urban sprawl is intensifying in these areas. (2) The urban sprawl hot spots experience a pattern transformation process of point-like expansion-point-ring expansion-point-axis expansion-axis radiation. (3) Under the scenarios with different scales, the urban land sprawl in large cities is the highest, accounting for more than 47% of the UYR. Urban land sprawl extent in the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration is the highest, accounting for more than 51% of the UYR. The cities exhibiting the highest sprawl are Chongqing, Lijiang, and Kunming, accounting for 25.84%, 7.37%, and 5.11%, respectively, of the UYR. (4) In the different time scenario simulations, the urban land in large cities exhibits the highest sprawl, accounting for approximately 48.16% of the UYR. The urban land in the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration demonstrates the highest sprawl, accounting for 50.92% of the UYR. (5) From 1996 to 2002, the driver with the highest influence on urban sprawl was secondary industry share of GDP, with a q-statistic of 0.616. From 2009 to 2015, the driver with the highest influence on urban sprawl was green space per capita with a q-statistic of 0.396.

Urban Metabolism and Spontaneous Architectural Growth: A Sustainable Strategy Featuring Participatory Co-Construction by Multiple Stakeholders

Several studies have linked urban metabolism with sustainable development goals, but few studies have addressed how architectural design could contribute to the linkage. Japanese Architectural Metabolism promotes the empowering of individuals and encourages spontaneous growth through urban metabolism. However, Architectural Metabolism has lacked (1) links with sustainable urban development goals, (2) realistic and powerful strategies, and (3) the ability to keep up with information technology. Whether and how architectural design can contribute to sustainable and spontaneous urban growth remains unclear. This paper presents case studies of the growth and renewal of formal and informal urban organisms in East Asia. The cases reveal that sustainable spontaneous urban growth should be linked with a strong governance system as well as adaptive architectural and construction technology that is easy to master by users. This paper argues that the conditional basis of contemporary Chinese urban development can support the spontaneous growth of architecture. Finally, a design strategy is proposed that reconstructs participatory co-construction among the government, social investors, and users with information and adaptive construction technology. Its purpose is to realize the orderly metabolism and spontaneous growth of buildings and achieve economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable development.

Development zones and urban economic performance in China: Direct impact and channel effects

AbstractDevelopment zones constitute a special type of place‐based policy that has been implemented worldwide. As an essential economic development engine, Chinese National Economic and Technological Development Zones (NETDZs) are perceived as a successful example. However, few studies have looked into the channel effects at work in development zones concerning industrialization and urbanization, despite the crucial nature of such effects with regard to sustainable development of development zones. Following a brief description of NETDZs and their theoretical mechanisms with urban economic performance, industrialization, and urbanization, this study used a simultaneous equation model to generate empirical evidence of the impact of the establishment of NETDZs on urban economic performance and its channel effects through industrialization and urbanization. The results confirm that NETDZs exerts a positive and significant impact on urban economic performance, and NETDZs also show indirect influence in urban growth through urbanization. Although significant and positive intermediation of industrialization remains invalid, foreign direct investment and investment in fixed assets are still crucial in Chinese industrialization. Both industrialization and urbanization play an important role in Chinese urban economic development. Meanwhile, compared with eastern regions more influenced by urbanization, industrialization still acts as a major impetus in inland China.

Chinese Urban Development under the “New Type Urbanization” Policy

The Chinese 7th national population census (2020) was held in the recent year of the "urbanization of a new type" state program. The successful management of the entire complex of urbanization processes becomes an important social and political task. Improving the living standards and social security of migrants acts as important components of the reduction of inequality and development of human capital. Census data shows that the program helped the government not only to support the growth of the number of urban dwellers but also to improve the quality of the process. The share of urban dwellers in Chinese population increased from 54.3% in 2014 to 61.4% in 2020, the number of cities larger than 5 million inhabitants reached 21. The Government lifted restrictions on obtaining permanent registration in cities less than 3 million inhabitants and issued more than 100 million intermediate type registration documents (juzhuzheng). Transparent and unified point-quota registration rules have been introduced in large cities, which usually rank applicants according to their age, education, length of residence, tax history and other parameters. These measures made possible expansion of the coverage of rural and nonresident migrants and their children by the social protection system. At the same time, contrary to the program's guidelines, population of the largest cities continued to grow rapidly, and significant interregional and intraregional imbalances remained sharp. Share of the north-eastern part in the urban population of China continued to decline. The continuation of the program "urbanization of a new type" was not formally announced, however it is clear, that the urban system of the PRC will develop in line with the program’s guidelines in the next decade.

Ritual Spaces, Governmentality and Cultural Governance in Urban Development: The Case of Shenzhen

Recently, the concept of “cultural governance” has gained analytical traction in research on Chinese urban development. This is mostly diagnosed as a top-down process of defining and imposing cultural forms in government-led projects, such as in tourism. We argue that the case of Shenzhen manifests important differences, and is highly significant, considering the national and international status of this mega-city. Based on detailed field studies, supplemented with information about other cases, we show that in Shenzhen local cultural forms show resilience and increasing public presence, while also being shaped by inclusive cultural policies that are informed by the national drive towards reinstating traditional Chinese values as part and parcel of national identity. One manifestation is the enactment of the traditional ritual space of the village in urban architecture, such as the duality of ancestral hall and village temple, often at so-called “cultural squares,” and the expression of territorial ambitions of lineages in competitive projects of redevelopment. We suggest enhancing the concept of cultural governance by the concept of governmentality to grasp these phenomena analytically.

Urban resilience assessment based on contradiction between supply and demand of the daily activity–environment system: A case study on Nanjing, China

In addition to safety and risk issues, urban resilience research should focus more comprehensive and universal contradictions. Considering the main contradictions of Chinese urban development, and the connotation of urban resilience, a theoretical framework is constructed based on the contradiction between supply and demand of the daily activity–environment system. Furthermore, an assessment index system of urban resilience is also developed that considers both volume and quality of demand and supply and has a grade standard. Finally, utilizing multi–source geographic big data, Nanjing is taken as a case study, the spatial characteristics and optimization path of urban resilience are identified. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The activity–environment system resilience presents a “center–periphery” sprawling spatial structure, and it is mainly at the level of “reluctant resilience” and “almost lack of resilience”. (2) The evolution of the activity–environment system resilience is still absolutely volume driven, and the positive drive of relative quality is limited or even reversed. In addition, all the bilateral local spatial autocorrelations are generally represented as “center–periphery” separated spatial structures, but it is not always consistent with the overall trend. (3) For the governance of urban resilience, it is necessary to focus on common improvement and matching of absolute volume and relative quality in contents, orderly flow, accumulation and dispersion of supply and demand in ideas, and the strong support of new ideas and technologies in methods.

Evaluation of urban green development transformation process for Chinese cities during 2005–2016

Urban green development transformation (UGDT) has become a new direction for Chinese urban development in the 21st century. In this paper, firstly constructs an index system for dynamic assessment of UGDT based on resource consumption, economic development and social welfare, secondly propose a two-stage decomposition to further open the “black box” of UGDT process from the perspective of ecological welfare performance. This paper empirically investigates the evaluation and staged decomposition of the UGDT process in 286 cities of China over the period 2005–2016, and propose improvement paths based on this. Our results show that the UGDT of Chinese cities will gradually begin and be in a benign state of time after 2014. Moreover, find that low eco-economic efficiency (EE) is the main reason for the low level of overall CGDT in cities, and that the CGDT in regions has shown a trend of “the highest in the central, the second in the east, and the lowest in the west”. Correspondingly, based on the principles of obvious “short board” priority improvement between green development and urban social welfare, this paper can explore the different improvement paths of CGDT in different cities.

Moving Urban Sculptures towards Sustainability: The Urban Sculpture Planning System in China

Following the continuous development characterized by large-scale constructions, Chinese urban development has shifted to the promotion of refined urban space quality. Urban sculpture, an important part of public arts, has been receiving increased attention in China as an important carrier for highlighting urban characteristics, culture, and history within cultural policies. As a type of cultural capital, it offers innovative methods to address the issues of economic, social, and environmental sustainability, in particular cultural sustainability. Interdisciplinary theories of urban planning are creatively applied to guide, coordinate, and improve the sustainable production of urban sculptures in China. This research was initiated to: (1) Illustrate how urban sculptures are produced through an urban planning system in the context of China; (2) explain what kind of influencing factors in relation to sustainability exist, mainly within the framework of planning strategies and cultural policies; and (3) put forward sustainable planning strategies to produce urban sculptures. To answer the above inquiries, we reviewed more than 100 articles, plans, and government documents, and we conducted several semi-structured interviews. The article argues that urban planning strategies and policies have been conceived as strategic instruments by the Chinese municipal governments to realize sustainable development of urban sculptures. Our findings would enrich knowledge on geographic studies of public art planning through the contextualized analysis of a Chinese urban sculpture planning system. It also fills the gap in the literature on the sustainability of urban sculptures by approaching the perspectives of planning strategies and cultural policies.

Urban Risk Generalization in China: Space and Governance*

As an issue in Chinese urban development, handling urban risk generalization invites reflection on the structural features and internal development of the immediate or potential risks entailed in rapid urbanization across the globe. As part of research on national governance modernization, China has reached a consensus on managing urban risks. A study of spatial theory indicates that urban risk generalization in China is essentially a structural issue arising from an immature system of generalized benefits in urban space rights and interests along with an unbalanced spatial structure, functional disarray and ecological disruption arising from inequitable and unbalanced urban spatial development, readjustment and renovation. As an innovative form of modern urban public management with its target shifting from the pursuit of material things to people-centered development, spatial management enlists actors including government, business, society and citizens to seek a “community of shared spatial interests” with a rational structure, effective functions and an optimized environment at the level of spatial production and interest distribution. We need innovation in the spatial structures, drivers and mechanisms of urban public management and cultural ecology to realize their institutionalization, synthesis and reordering, strategically forestalling and resolving urbanization risks and realizing a spatial governance vision of the scientific, fair and sustainable allocation, growth and renovation of urban space in the risk era.

Regional Differentiation and Classification for Carrying Constraints on the Resources and Environment of China

Abstract: Research on the relationship between national resource constraint-region types and environmental carrying capacity is essential for the continued development of Chinese industrialization and urbanization. Thus, utilizing a series of key indexes including the per-capita potential of available land resources, the per-capita potential of available water resources, the degree of environmental stress, and the degree of ecological restriction, a step-by-step, integrated measuring method is presented here to understand the constrained carrying elements of water and land resources as well as environment and ecology. Spatial differences are analyzed and area types classified at the county level across China. Results reveal that: (1) Almost 90% of China is strongly constrained by both resources and the environment, while nearly 50% of national territory is strongly constrained by two elements, especially in areas of intensive population and industry to the east of the Helan-Longmen Mountain line; (2) Dens...

Evaluating cities' vitality and identifying ghost cities in China with emerging geographical data

With the rapid urbanization of China, plenty of new urban lands have been developed with the great expectation to deal with all kinds of issues in old urban areas such as high population density, great demand on limited land resources, and decaying environment. However, a great proportion of vacancy in these newly developed units leads to the undesired observation of ghost cities. Lacking of clear and effectively evaluation criterion, the understanding of ghost cities in China is then rather limited. Considering the fact of ghost cities, we borrow the theory of urban vitality to identify and evaluate ghost cities in this paper. We argue that ghost cities are associated with very low urban vitality. In the light of big/open data, we are able to profile ghost cities of China based on 535,523 recent project-level residential developments from 2002 to 2013. We use the national-wide and million magnitude road junctions, points of interest and location based service records of 2014/2015 for measuring the morphological, functional and social vitality of each residential project. We then aggregate the project level evaluation results into the city level and thirty ghost cities are then identified by comparing the residential projects' vitality in the old (developed before or in 2000) and new (developed after 2000) urban areas in each city. Our profiling results illustrate the big picture of China's past residential developments, and then of ghost cities. We find the average vitality of residential projects in new urban areas is only 8.8% of that in old urban areas, denoting the potential existence of ghost cities in newly developed areas in Chinese cities. We have also benchmarked our identified ghost cities with existing rankings, the Baidu searching engine and night-time light images. Although we admit that ghost cities may exist in the particular urbanizing phase of China and that some ghost cities now may be well developed in the future, this study provides a thorough evaluation on the ghost city condition in China. This may shed light on policy implications for Chinese urban development.

Industrial heritage tourism development and city image reconstruction in Chinese traditional industrial cities: a web content analysis

ABSTRACTStudies on industrial heritage and industrial tourism development at the city level in China are limited. Through a web content analysis of the industrial components in cities’ images and tourism, this paper attempts to explore whether old industrial cities are promoting industrial heritage tourism and rebuilding postindustrial images. A total of 20 traditionally industrial cities were selected as samples for data collection based on the content of their official websites, and this study finds that industrial heritage and industrial tourism are rarely promoted or even mentioned on those websites, indicating that industrial culture is gradually being eroded in China. Traditional Chinese industrial cities tend to look for opportunities to participate in global competition rather than reflecting and preserving their past through the process of urban development. More attention should be paid in the future to integrating industrial culture into Chinese urban development, both in academic research and in practice.