With urbanism becoming the key driver of socio-economic change in China, this book provides much needed up-to-date material on Chinese urban development. Demonstrating how it transcends the centrally-planned model of economic growth, and assessing the extent to which it has gone beyond the common wisdom of Chinese ‘gradualism’, the book covers a wide range of important topics, including: local land development the local state private-public partnership foreign investment urbanization ageing home ownership. Providing a clear appraisal of recent trends in Chinese urbanism, this book puts forward important new conceptual resources to fill the gap between the outdated model of the ‘Third World’ city and the globalizing cities of the West.

In the last 30 years, China’s record economic growth lifted half a billion people out of poverty, with rapid urbanization providing abundant labor, cheap land, and good infrastructure. While China has avoided some of the common ills of urbanization, strains are showing as inefficient land development leads to urban sprawl and ghost towns, pollution threatens people’s health, and farmland and water resources are becoming scarce. With China’s urban population projected to rise to about one billion – or close to 70 percent of the country’s population – by 2030, China’s leaders are seeking a more coordinated urbanization process. Urban China is a joint research report by a team from the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China’s State Council which was established to address the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in China and to help China forge a new model of urbanization. The report takes as its point of departure the conviction that China's urbanization can become more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable. However, it stresses that achieving this vision will require strong support from both government and the markets for policy reforms in a number of area. The report proposes six main areas for reform: first, amending land management institutions to foster more efficient land use, denser cities, modernized agriculture, and more equitable wealth distribution; second, adjusting the hukou household registration system to increase labor mobility and provide urban migrant workers equal access to a common standard of public services; third, placing urban finances on a more sustainable footing while fostering financial discipline among local governments; fourth, improving urban planning to enhance connectivity and encourage scale and agglomeration economies; fifth, reducing environmental pressures through more efficient resource management; and sixth, improving governance at the local level.

With urbanism becoming the key driver of socio-economic change in China, this book provides much needed up-to-date material and covers key topics on Chinese urban development.

This book offers an essential introduction to the phenomenon of shrinking cities in China, highlighting several case studies, qualitative and quantitative methods, and planning responses. As an emerging topic in urbanizing China, cities experiencing population loss have begun attracting increasing attention. All chapters of the book were contributed by leading researchers on the subject in China. Richly illustrated with photographs for a better visual understanding of the topic, the book will benefit a broad readership, ranging from researchers and students of urban planning, urban geography, urban economics, urban sociology and urban design, to practitioners in the areas of urban planning and design.

This book is an interdisciplinary examination of China's new urban development model and the challenges Chinese cities face in the 21st century. China is in the midst of a historic developmental inflection point, grappling with a significantly slowing economy, rapidly rising inequality, massive migration, skyrocketing housing prices, alarming environmental problems, and strong pushback from the West. In this volume, Western and Chinese scholars in different disciplines offer the clearest look yet at some of the main challenges China faces, including domestic and international contexts, the new urban development model, inclusion and well-being of migrants and their families, and urban sustainability. This book sheds light on China’s ongoing development and future directions, and has strong policy implications for anyone interested in the future of China.

Featuring everything from sports stadiums to shopping malls, hundreds of new cities in China stand empty, with hundreds more set to be built by 2030. Between now and then, the country's urban population will leap to over one billion, as the central government kicks its urbanization initiative into overdrive. In the process, traditional social structures are being torn apart, and a rootless, semi-displaced, consumption orientated culture rapidly taking their place. Ghost Cities of China is an enthralling dialogue driven, on-location search for an understanding of China's new cities and the reasons why many currently stand empty.

The nine empirical studies in New Narratives of Urban Space in Republican Chinese Cities, organized under the general framework of urban space, examine three critical dimensions of the great urban transformation in Republican China—social, legal and governance orders. Together these narratives suggest a new perception of this historical urbanism. While modern economic development was a major drive for Chinese urban transformation, this volume highlights the dimension of the multilayered forces that shape urban space by looking into that less quantifiable, but equally important cultural realm and by exposing the ways in which these forces created new urban narratives, which became themselves shapers of urban space and of our perception of the Republican urbanity.

This book documents the impact of the Chinese culture on the development of city types in China in the past four decades, leading to surprising urban realities that often escape normative urban theories. The book uses the concept of drift, which, together with mutation, adaptation, and migration, contributes to the rudimentary patterns of biological change; drift of phenotypes takes place when chance events randomly terminate some features and allow other features to flourish in ways that are unrelated to other patterns. The Chinese culture has exerted a set of forces that may be seen to have functioned as "unexpected events" in the normative processes of urban change. Through thirteen case studies, more than 60 original maps and drawings, and extensive photographic documentation, the book reveals how three "drift triggers"--ten thousand things, figuration, and group action--have altered typological development in Chinese cities in the past four decades.

Decades ago, there was no distinct middle class in the People's Republic of China. Any meaningful discussion of China's economy, politics, or society must take into account the rapid emergence and explosive growth of the Chinese middle class. This book details the origins and characteristics of this dramatic change.

Planning for Growth: Urban and Regional Planning in China provides an overview of the changes in China’s planning system, policy, and practices using concrete examples and informative details in language that is accessible enough for the undergraduate but thoroughly grounded in a wealth of research and academic experience to support academics. It is the first accessible text on changing urban and regional planning in China under the process of transition from a centrally planned socialist economy to an emerging market in the world. Fulong Wu, a leading authority on Chinese cities and urban and regional planning, sets up the historical framework of planning in China including its foundation based on the proactive approach to economic growth, the new forms of planning, such as the ‘strategic spatial plan’ and ‘urban cluster plans’, that have emerged and stimulated rapid urban expansion and transformed compact Chinese cities into dispersed metropolises. And goes on to explain the new planning practices that began to pay attention to eco-cities, new towns and new development areas. Planning for Growth: Urban and Regional Planning in China demonstrates that planning is not necessarily an ‘enemy of growth’ and plays an important role in Chinese urbanization and economic growth. On the other hand, it also shows planning’s limitations in achieving a more sustainable and just urban future.