Implementation of the Metropolitan Growth Management in the Transition Era: Evidence from Beijing

Abstract

Macro-scale urban growth management at the metropolitan level in a transitional and developing country is often criticized because of its weak performances in controlling local development activities that are fuelled by autonomous decisions of local actors and market forces. This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the implementation of urban growth management in Beijing, a typical transitional city. The results suggest that the objectives of municipal growth management have partly been achieved through local district and county development. Some unexpected and illegal local developments are counterproductive from the perspective of municipal growth management. The findings suggest that there are problems in the implementation of macro-scale growth management in the context of new trends towards political decentralization and marketization, although the continuing centrally planned system still plays a vital role in policy formation. In the interest of future policy, the institutional capacity of municipal growth management should be enhanced to enable the planning system to control the increasing local autonomy and market forces in urban development in the transition process.