Formation of City Regions from Bottom-up Initiatives: Investigating Coalitional Developmentalism in the Pearl River Delta

Abstract

A conceptual framework of coalitional developmentalism is presented to advance understanding of how China’s city regions have developed from bottom-up initiatives. Coalitional developmentalism extends state developmentalism with an emphasis on coalitional politics through which local state agents spontaneously form strategic coalitions to pursue regional growth. The case of the Pearl River Delta shows that a defining goal of coalitional developmentalism is to bolster regional governance capacity to overcome territorial fragmentation induced by jurisdiction-based development. First, the flexible state regulation is fundamental to developing deliberate scale-building processes toward regional governance. Second, bottom-up initiatives for building city regions emerge through a decentralized institutional structure in which governments at various scales work in an integrated fashion—via the functional integration of cities in a local official system—and the strong governance capacity of advanced cities. Third, coalitional developmentalism creates a testbed for facilitating region-based territorial growth by the central government, following long-established planning centrality paradigms. Fourth, bottom-up innovative behaviors unfold through coalitional politics associated with the top-down state spatial interventions that are a distinctive characteristic of “state spatiality” in postreform China.

本文提出合作发展主义的概念框架, 以加强我们对中国城市地区自下而上发展的理解。合作发展主义扩展了国家发展主义, 强调合作政治(即, 地方国家代理人通过合作政治, 自发形成战略合作), 以寻求区域增长。中国珠江三角洲案例表明, 合作发展主义的明确目标是增强区域治理能力, 克服基于管辖权的发展所导致的地域分割。首先, 灵活的国家监管对有针对性的规模化建设至关重要。其次, 自下而上的城市区域建设行为, 来自于权力下放体制结构, 各级政府将城市功能整合到地方政府体系, 以整合方式开展工作；来自于先进城市的强大治理能力。第三, 在长期推行规划中心主义范式之后, 合作发展主义为中央政府推动区域增长创造了新的试验平台。第四, 在中国后改革时期, 自上而下国家空间干预是“国家空间性”的特点；与这种干预有关的合作政治, 是开展自下而上创新的途径。

Se presenta un marco conceptual del desarrollismo de coalición para avanzar en la comprensión de cómo las ciudades-región de China se han desarrollado a partir de iniciativas desde abajo. El desarrollismo de coalición expande el desarrollismo de estado con un énfasis en las políticas de coalición, a través de las cuales los agentes estatales locales espontáneamente forman coaliciones estratégicas en pro del crecimiento regional. El caso del Delta del Río Pearl muestra que un objetivo definitorio del desarrollismo de coalición es reforzar la capacidad de la gobernanza regional para superar la fragmentación territorial inducida por el desarrollo basado en jurisdicción. En primer término, la regulación estatal flexible es fundamental para desarrollar procesos deliberados de creación a escala orientados a la gobernanza regional. En segundo lugar, las iniciativas que vienen de abajo para construir ciudades-región surgen desde una estructura institucional descentralizada en la que los gobiernos a diferentes escalas trabajan de manera integrada –por medio de la integración funcional de las ciudades dentro de un sistema oficial local– y de la fuerte capacidad de gobernanza de las ciudades avanzadas. En tercer lugar, el desarrollismo de coalición crea un banco de pruebas para facilitar el crecimiento territorial basado en región por el gobierno central, siguiendo paradigmas de centralidad de la planeación establecidos desde hace tiempo. En cuarto lugar, los comportamientos innovadores de la base se despliegan a través de las políticas de coalición asociadas con las intervenciones espaciales estatales desde la cima que son la característica distintiva de la “espacialidad estatal” en la China posreforma.

Key Words:

• bottom-up initiatives
• city regionalism
• coalitional developmentalism
• coalitional politics
• Pearl River Delta

关键词:

• 自下而上倡议
• 城市区域主义
• 合作发展主义
• 合作政治
• 珠江三角洲

Palabras clave:

• Delta del Río Pearl
• desarrollismo de coalición
• iniciativas de origen basal
• política de coalición
• regionalismo urbano

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to three anonymous reviewers for their constructive and very insightful comments.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported in this article was funded by the Impact Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme (Project No. 3133058), the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. PolyU 25609920), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 42101187), and the Ministry of Education of China (Project No. 20JZD013).

Notes on contributors

Xianchun Zhang

XIANCHUN ZHANG is Associate Professor in the School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include city-regional governance and regional integration, land management, and urban growth in China.

Jianfa Shen

JIANFA SHEN is Professor in the Department of Geography and Resource Management and Director of the Research Center for Urban and Regional Development, Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong SAR, China. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests focus on migration analysis and modeling, urban and regional development, and urban competitiveness and governance in China.

Yi Sun

YI SUN is Assistant Professor in the Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include age-friendly built environment, urban and regional planning, land governance, and state theories.

Changchang Zhou

CHANGCHANG ZHOU is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include city-regional governance and regional integration, rural land reform, and scalar politics of urban development.

Yu Yang

YU YANG is Professor of Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resource Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests focus on economic geography and regional development, and energy transformation and energy safety.