Master Planning under Urban–Rural Integration: The Case of Nanjing, China

Abstract

Urban–rural integration has become the macro policy in China to narrow the gap between urban and rural development. Meanwhile, the rapid pace of economic growth and urbanisation has increasingly posed challenges to urban areas over land availability and provision of infrastructure and labour. Policymakers have started to search for a more sustainable development mode to improve urban competitiveness. Against this context, urban master planning has started to adopt urban–rural integration as a core principle and extend its spatial coverage to rural areas. Through the case of Nanjing, this article investigates the practice and delivery of the 2008 planning reforms that enhanced city-regions as a spatial context for planning and assesses whether the new integrative plan achieves the objective of sustainable urban development.

城乡一体化已成为中国目前的宏观政策，以缩小城乡差距。同时，快速的经济增长和城市化对城市用地、基础设施及劳动力提出了严峻的挑战。政策制定者开始寻找可持续发展程度更高的模式，提高城市竞争力。在这一语境下，城市统一规划开始将城乡一体化作为其核心原则，并强调扩大城市空间，吸纳农村地区。本文以南京为例，考察 2008 年规划改革的实践。这次改革强调以城市大区为规划的空间单位。文章还对可持续城市发展目标的实现状况进行了评估。

Keywords:

• Urban–rural integration
• urban planning
• master planning
• sustainable development
• polycentric
• suburbanisation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Nanjing Government and all the interviewees who participated in the research. We are grateful to Professor Rebecca Chiu, Dr Mark Baker and the anonymous referees for their very helpful comments.

Notes

1. See Nanjing Master Plan (2007–2020) and Shenzhen Master Plan (2010–2020).

2. The national planning department used to be the Ministry of Construction, but was replaced by the Ministry of Housing and Urban–Rural Development in 2008.

3. The1990 Act treated towns as cities, so most towns follow the guidance of cities to do their planning.

4. Township (xiang) used to be at the same spatial level as towns in China. The difference is that a township is more rural while a town is urban. There are hardly any townships in Nanjing and the eastern developed areas.

5. Shiyu covers the whole administrative area of the city including the central city and its surrounding countryside.

6. Planners are those professionals working in planning institutes (in semi-public and private sectors). They do planning consultancy for planning bureaux. All the planners interviewed in this research were either from semi-public or private planning institutes. They are different from local planning officers as the latter are government officials working on planning-related administration.

7. Now the Nanjing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban–Rural Development.