A Tale of Two Eco-Cities: Experimentation under Hierarchy in Shanghai and Tianjin

Abstract

Two ambitious ‘new city’ projects were launched in China during the past 15 years—the ‘Dongtan eco-city’ project in Shanghai and the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City project in Tianjin. Both have received much international publicity and attention. However, the Dongtan project has stalled, and will evidently not be revived, while the Tianjin project continues, albeit with more moderate goals. We analyse the two cases, using the concept of ‘experimentation under hierarchy’ to show why one project is proceeding, while the other has failed. The key factors were strong international inputs of expertise and funds in the Tianjin project, along with crucial support from the central government, both of which were lacking in the Dongtan project.

近15 年来，中国搞了两个宏大的“新城”计划，一个是上海东滩生态城，一个是中国与新加坡合资的天津生态城。这两项工程都在国际上造出了许多舆论，也得到许多关注。然而，东滩项目半途而废，显然不会再度启动，目标比较温和的天津项目倒是一直在进行。本文用“科层制度下的实验”这一概念，分析这两个案例，说明为何一个项目得以延续，另一个却以失败告终。我们认为关键因素是天津项目有强大的国际专家团队和国际资金投入，而且，关键是得到了中央政府的支持，而这些因素东滩项目都没有。

Keywords::

• China
• environment
• governance
• eco-city
• experimentation under hierarchy

Funding

This research was supported by a City University of Hong Kong research grant [grant number 9610152].

Notes

^1. In the private sector, ‘corporate social responsibility’ increasingly includes, for many corporations, greater energy efficiency, the minimising of waste and the adoption of so-called ‘green technologies’ where that is cost effective over some period of time. Hence, some business leaders understand and may support the initiatives of urban planners to launch new energy-efficiency standards or recycling schemes, and some property developers also see opportunities in ‘eco-city’ developments.

^2. Policy experimentation theory also states that “special institutional prerequisites” are important in enhancing experimentation in China (Heilmann, 2008a, p. 24). In other words, the more local experimentation respects and works with existing institutional arrangements, the more likely it will succeed. However, although the institutional arrangements in the Dongtan and Tianjin projects were different, they were not the key to the success of one and failure of the other.

^3. The central government, concerned about the loss of prime agricultural land around cities in the 1980s and 1990s as cities expanded into their hinterlands to find space for factories, residential developments and new infrastructure projects, promulgated a series of regulations to restrict the conversion of agricultural land for development, including the Regulations for the Protection of Basic Agricultural Land in 1994 and the Protection Rules of Basic Farmland, along with a revised Land Management Act, in 1998 (Tan et al., 2005, p. 193). These regulations required central government approval for various types of conversions, and slowed (but did not halt) the loss of agricultural land around cities. In any case, it was necessary for cities to make applications for such conversions and these were periodically refused, as in the Shanghai/Dongtan case.