Abstract
This Special Issue aims to present an overview of contemporary planning theory debates in China. In our Introduction, we pose two key questions. Our first question is ‘does “Chinese planning theory” exist?’ Zhang (2008) suggests that ‘if planning theory is interpreted as the values, principles and working procedures which conduct planning practices, then Chinese planners already have their own set of theory’ (p. 18). However, the current composition of ‘Chinese’ planning theory is more heterogeneous than this. In 2004, Hok-Lin Leung initiated the ‘Qiushi Theory Forum’, a paper competition which encouraged the exploration of Chinese planning theory from three origins or perspectives, namely, inspirations from traditional Chinese philosophy, lessons from Western positivist philosophy and practices of the socialist market economy. While this, of course, provides excellent guidance on how to explore planning theory with so-called Chinese characteristics, it, at the same time, exemplifies the hybrid nature of current Chinese planning theory.
The year 1978, when China initiated its policy of reform and opening-up, marks a distinct turning point in the history of urban planning in modern China. The current urban planning system, with its values, ethics, approaches, laws, regulations and so on, has gradually formed since that time. Evolution of the intellectual enquiry of Chinese urban planning since 1978 may be divided into three stages. We must admit, however, that the evolutionary process is not linear, clear, legible or sequential. Rather, it has taken a course characterized by chaos, ambiguity, conflict and complexity. For this reason, in this Introduction, we do not make any explicit division between stages, which would, in fact, be impossible, as they overlap with each other both chronologically and in terms of content. We do, however, suggest a distinction between ‘planning theory in China’ – theory based on imported ideas – and ‘Chinese planning theory’ – theory developed from Chinese ideas.
An early stage of planning theory development since 1978 witnessed a direct borrowing from Western thought, theories and approaches, with an emphasis on theoretical exploration of the ‘fundamental theoretical issues’. Such issues included the duality of urban planning (e.g. centralization and decentralization, control and development), the foundation of planning theory (science or rationality?), ways of thinking of urban planning (dialectic, systematic, comparative, advanced, dynamic, etc.) and so on. From 1978, all kinds of ‘Western’ planning thoughts and theories poured into China and were eagerly engaged as important enlightenments for developing ‘Chinese’ planning theory – what we term ‘planning theory in China’ – finally forming the second origin of planning theory debate mentioned above. Cheng’s paper in this issue exemplifies this trend.
This theoretical exploration reflects our second key question with which planning scholars and practitioners are concerned: ‘what is urban planning?’ We note that this question essentially concerns planning practice. The question ‘what is the nature of planning theory?’ is asked, but often in a rhetorical sense. For Chinese scholars, ‘planning theory’ is a ‘code word’ (Friedmann, 1998: 246) that all of them use, but no consensus has yet been built on its definition, connotation, classification or even its role or utility.
The second stage of intellectual evolution, approximately from the late 1980s or the early 1990s onwards, demonstrated a strong tendency towards ‘theory localization’ by means of learning from past Chinese teachings, writings and experiences. This included both a study of the history of ancient urban planning thought and planning practices (often referred to as ‘urban construction’) as well as efforts made to extract useful knowledge from ancient experiences and philosophical literatures. These efforts or research direction were later enhanced by the aforementioned ‘Qiushi Theory Forum’ and constitute the origin of Chinese planning theory.
Meanwhile, as the market-oriented land use reform under the socialist market economic system in 1989 shook the traditional planning system, the third ‘intellectual’ origin gradually surfaced. With this came issues, such as urban competitiveness, urban management, city marketing and so on, that became hot topics at the beginning of the 21st century. The case provided in Luo et al.’s paper evidences this. Unlike the other two origins, and due to its development from socialist market economy practices, it has a very strong empiricist tendency which advocates development of theory from practice, or what Judith Allen (2011, personal communication) calls ‘from observation to abstraction’. However, empiricism is criticized as one of the two common mistakes in ‘Chinese’ planning research. That is, hypotheses which are induced from experiments are mistaken for theories (Li and Ma, 2007).
In the current or the third stage, connections between ‘Chinese’ and international theoretical inquiry are more enhanced than ever. All five articles in this Special Issue reflect this tendency to some extent. Some planning theory research in China has moved beyond mere introduction or translation of ‘travelling’ (Healey, 2011) planning ideas from overseas and now participates in direct and ongoing discussions with such concepts. For example, in addition to the popular idea of ‘communicative/collaborative planning’, scholars and practitioners discuss issues including uncertainty, complexity, flexibility, resilience and so on in urban planning. Simultaneously, the sound of critique gets louder in theory debate. However, many recognize that planning theory research in China still lags behind its international counterparts in theoretical innovation. Many scholars are reluctant to spend long hours in exploration and innovation of Chinese theories as it is easier to introduce ‘fashionable’ foreign theories (Wu and Yu, 2005).
In this context of planning theory research, we initiated a ‘call for papers’ for the Special Issue ‘Planning theory in China and Chinese planning theory’ and received 15 abstracts. They came from 10 universities and research institutions, namely, the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, Dalian University of Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing Institute of Geography & Limnology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Renmin University, South China University of Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Tongji University, Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University (in alphabetical order). We then invited the authors of seven abstracts to develop their work further as full manuscripts, of which five papers have survived peer review and are published here. Although the range of topics included in this issue is, to some degree, accidental, these five articles represent many of the latest research interests and trends in contemporary Chinese planning theory scholarship.
The contributions in this issue illustrate how the second and third intellectual origins influence planning theory debate in China. The first three articles could be loosely classified as inspired by the second origin. Kang Cao and Yan Zhang’s paper discusses a non-Euclidean model of urban planning, in reflection of the spatial turn in social sciences and humanities (Thrift, 2006), especially in human geography and urban planning. Yao Cheng’s article discusses Internet-based collaborative planning practices with two cases and alleges that while Internet media helps amplify the voices of grassroots in an urban planning realm, it behaves like a double-edged sword to promote consensus-seeking rather than consensus-building in collaborative planning practice. As its title shows, Lan Wang and Charles Hoch’s article is both a ‘pragmatic’ study on, and comparative study between, Shanghai’s and Chicago’s, and more broadly, Chinese and the United States’ planning systems. Despite the differences between the two systems, they argue that planners in the two cities share common pragmatic planning doctrines about sustainability and the public good. Dongfeng Yang et al.’s and Zhendong Luo et al.’s articles exemplify the third research trend in Chinese planning theory debate: that is, to frame theoretical questions from the socialist market economy practices. Yang et al.’s contribution shows the authors’ efforts to find a win–win regional policy framework between urbanization and sustainability. Rather than overturning the urbanization process to meet the requirements of sustainability, they offer a reverse thinking to accommodate and take advantage of urbanization to promote sustainability. Luo et al.’s paper, based on Friedmann’s Endogenous Development Model about urban development and case testing, proposes the combination of city marketing and local resource endowment to stimulate the development of small- and medium-sized cities.
Almost all the contributions are characterized by empirical study, reflecting the vast majority of current Chinese planning research. Perhaps planning practice often precedes theoretical studies (Yang, 2003), a gap between practice and theory, which is occurring in China as it did in several other countries in the 20th Century (Reade, 1987). We look forward to the ongoing and future development both of planning theories in China, inspired by imported ‘travelling’ ideas, and in particular, to the development of Chinese planning theory.
Finally, we would like to offer our sincere thanks to Min Zhao, Michael Gunder, Emma Fergusson and Anthony Richardson, the journal’s referees and all the authors who responded to our call for papers. This Special Issue could not have been published without their generous help and support.