Planning for Sustainable Urbanisation in China: a Community Perspective

Wed 14 February 2018

Mill Lane Lecture Rooms

The introduction of the ‘National New-type Urbanisation Plan’ by the Chinese government in March 2014 signified a shift in its urban development strategy towards a more human-centred and environmentally sustainable pathway. In order to accommodate rapid urban growth, the concept of a ‘new’ type of urbanisation was introduced to advocate a human-centred development strategy by integrating ‘ecological civilisation’ into the urbanisation process. Such planning for eco-urbanisation has to be underpinned by a thorough understanding of the relationships between the behaviour of urban residents, resource consumption, policy control measures and environmental change in communities who are subject to most urbanisation pressure. By adopting a multi-stage, spatial cluster sampling method, a sample of 2,310 participants from 21 neighbourhoods of 8 townships in the Beijing Metropolitan Region was surveyed in May 2017. The seminar will present some of the survey findings from a three-year research study funded by the ESRC-NSFC Newton Fund. The analysis highlights the different spatial patterns of residents’ behaviour and attitude towards different aspects of sustainable development and their own well-being.

Cecilia Wong is Professor of Spatial Planning, Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute and Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. She is co-editor of Town Planning Review. She has research expertise on strategic spatial planning, policy monitoring and analysis, urban and regional development, and housing and infrastructure planning. She is currently carrying out a three year research project with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the China Natural Science Foundation, on ‘Eco-Urbanisation: promoting sustainable development in metropolitan regions of China’.

Cost: Free