Bargaining for nature: treating the environment in China’s urban planning practice

ABSTRACT

In much of the contemporary academic inquiry and political discourse on Chinese cities, urban entrepreneurialism and environmentalism often appear to be analyzed disjointedly and unreflectively. They are portrayed as two conflicting interests. Commentators also view urban planners as a homogenous group of professionals and/or state agents being forced to give up environmental goals to pursue economic value of space. Using the case of Tianjin Eco-City planning, this article interrogates the bargaining process between the “ecological value” and “commodity narrative”. It offers three major arguments. First, even though the discourse of environmental sustainability has been used to legitimize economic transformation, ecological demands are creating new pressures on entrepreneurial urban governance. Second, rather than treating Chinese planners as a fully constituted, internally coherent, organizationally-fixed, and operationally-consistent group, they should be viewed as hybrid, and diverse entities that represent divergent and sometimes contentious state interests. Third, planners, though still under tremendous pressure from landed interests, can become active players to positively influence urban transformation toward more environmental care.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban planning
• eco-city
• China
• Tianjin

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their useful comments in revising this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For details on the project background, please refer to http://www.tianjinecocity.gov.sg/ and http://www.eco-city.gov.cn/

2. These concessions include (1) no other commodity housing projects will be approved within 5 km radius of the site in the next 5 years to ensure SSTEC’s profit; (2) land concession will be granted to the project; (3) polluting sources within the project’s vicinity will be removed or mitigated, and (4) intercity railroads (e.g. Tianjin-Qinghuangdao) will be extended to cover the vicinity of the eco-city.

3. For details on KPIs, please check http://www.tianjinecocity.gov.sg/.

4. For details, see http://www.tianjinecocity.gov.sg/ and http://www.eco-city.gov.cn

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this article was fully supported by a grant from the General Research Fund (GRF) sponsored by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong [Reference No. CUHK457711].