China's cities are subject to dramatic changes. Cities develop into Megacities, economic growth as well as the drastic increase of traffic contribute to a profound transformation of urban infrastructure. However, the processes are more visible than the stakeholders supporting such transformations. What are the location factors, spatial principles and planning philosophies that direct the cities' growth and reconstruction? The articles of this anthology investigate the above mentioned questions. Using various case studies, they analyse processes of location choice and transformation in Chinese coastal Megacities and in inland areas; they explore urban governance processes and - vice versa - also include the planning concepts of rural areas.

This book examines speculative urban development and new pattern of urban governance in the context of China's neoliberal turning. By adopting a post-structuralist lens, the book discusses the restless interactions and power relations, hidden behind the restless conflicts, struggles, negotiations and cooperation among multiple stakeholders during state-led and capital-driven land development. This book therefore reveals a state-led benefit distribution mechanism through which stakeholders are actively and passively involved in the renewal process and slowly promote speculative land development projects in continued cooperation and competition.

As a legacy of the socialist state with central planning, Five-Year Planning (FYP) is very important in regulating socio-economic and spatial development even in post-reform China. This book tries to fill the research gap between examining the role of FYP and how spatial elements in the FYP mechanism have operated and transformed in spatial regulatory practices in transitional China. By building a conceptual framework and studying two empirical cases at different spatial scales, with the help of both qualitative and quantitative methods, it helps to understand various stakeholders, institutions and planning administrations, mechanisms of articulating spatial planning into the FYP system and the effectiveness of spatial planning in solving place-specific governance issues in urban and regional China.

Rapid urbanization in China in recent decades and the challenges of social and regional integration and governance have been issues of major concern. This book explores the course of urbanization and development in China over recent decades. It considers a range of issues including urbanization, changing urban and regional systems, regional integration and governance. The book pays particular attention to the economic relations between Hong Kong and mainland China and how regional development, integration and governance unfold in the Hong Kong-Pearl River Delta region.

This authoritative Handbook presents a comprehensive analysis of the spatial transformation of the state; a pivotal process of globalization. It explores the state as an ongoing project that is always changing, illuminating the new spaces of geopolitics that arise from these political, social, cultural, and environmental negotiations.

Explores the challenges of large, complex, institutionally fragmented, and dynamic city-regions across the BRICS countries and the emergence of formal and informal governance arrangements.

1. Introduction: Picking Winners in Space --2. Spatial Policy in China --3. The Multilevel Politics of Development --4. Hunan: The Making of an Urban Champion --5. Jiangxi: The Politics of Dispersed Development --6. Shaanxi: Uneven Development Redux --7. Jiangsu: Shifting Tides of Spatial Policy --8. Rethinking Development Politics in China and Beyond --Appendix A. Analyzing Outcomes across China --Appendix B. Cross-National Extensions to Brazil and India.

This book discusses urban planning and regional development practices in the twentieth century, and ways in which they are currently being transformed. It addresses questions such as: What are the factors affecting planning dynamics at local, regional, national and global scales? With the push to adopt a market paradigm in land development and infrastructure, the relationship between resource management, sustainable development and the role of governance has been transformed. Centralized planning is giving way to privatization, not only in the traditional regions but also in newly emerging regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Further, attempts are being made to bring planning related decision-making closer to the people who are most affected by it. Presenting a collection of studies from scholars around the world and highlighting recent advances in the field, the book is a valuable reference guide for those engaged in urban transformations, whether as graduate students, researchers, practitioners or policymakers.

This book for the first time thoroughly investigates the extent of economic and institutional integrations and the underlying governance reshuffling process of China’s city-regionalism. By using the Shenzhen-Dongguan-Huizhou sub-region (SDH) in southern China as an empirical case, this book provides convincing evidence that China’s city-regionalism is essentially a state-orchestrated and institution-based process. Perspectives from “market-industry-infrastructure” and multi-level governance (MLG) have been provided to systematically examine China’s city-regionalism. This book has essentially made a definitive contribution to China’s regional governance. Methodologically, it shows how China’s city-regionalism can be examined through a problem-solving and case-by-case paradigm, through building a bridge between an empirical slogan and an inclusive theoretical term for institutional integration and through MLG and its integrative approaches in China. Exhilarating findings are presented using extensive tables, graphs, and maps along with the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods. Undergraduates, graduates, and researchers who are interested in China’s city-regionalism and regional governance would be the readership of the book, and officers from different levels of government as well as policymakers will find the book inspiring.