Planning the Chinese city

摘要

This special issue of Town Planning Review focuses on the planning of the Chinese city, exploring the central issue of changing governance and development. The papers have been presented to a conference on China's Urban Transition and City Planning, held in Cardiffinjune 2007, and have been reviewed and revised for publication. The authors examine some of the new practices and trends in city planning in China, in particular covering themes of pro-growth and entrepreneurial governance, culture-led urban redevelopment and the complex and contradictory roles of city plans. The guest editors are grateful to Klaus Kunzmann for allowing us to include an English-language version of the paper he presented at the Fourth Rencontres Internationales de Recherche en Urbanisme, held in Grenoble in February 2008. This explores some of the implications of China's urban development for European metropolitan cities, although many other cities elsewhere could also take note of his thoughts. We also welcome the opportunity to include a photographic essay by Wang Fang on the MinGong in Beijing. The MinGong are migrant farm-workers who leave their homes to seek work in cities, and they are a widespread phenomenon in urban China today. These 'new' trends are not isolated from mainstream planning issues nowadays. In fact, because they are so closely related to the current debates in city planning in mature Western economies, this special issue hopes to broaden the discussion to include the wider context of greater market orientation, controversially encapsulated by so-called 'neo-liberalisation' (Harvey, 2005).