ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL FACTORS Globalization and marketization

In an attempt to compare contemporary new town development in Asia with the experiences with large scale planning in the West, the Dutch architectural historians Michelle Provoost and Wouter Vanstiphout examine the development of new towns in Europe during the 20^th century (Provoost, Vanstiphout, 2011). In comparison to new town development in post-war Europe, between 1946 and 1970, they note that the political, economic and commercial mechanisms behind such development in Asia today are very different. While in post-war Europe, new towns were developed as part of the social agenda, idealistic notions and social democracy, they write that in Asia today a diversity of actors are behind this development and economic, political and technical factors dominate. They also note that the attitude of the architectural and planning community to new town development has changed; ‘While both waves are similar in sheer quantity, their shocking uniformity and the universality of their principles, the towns of the previous generation were wholeheartedly ‘owned’ by the architectural and planning community, while the contemporary designers and planners seem to play an entirely different, even marginal, role.’ (p. 31).

Provoost and Vanstiphout conclude that contemporary new towns in Asia are used as economic and political tools to speed up modernization, attract investments and generate economic growth. New towns in China must also be understood as part of this global neoliberal agenda.

Since the 1990s, urbanization in China has been highly market driven.

Urban development, with its main focus on infrastructure and housing, generates a large portion of China’s GDP. The phenomenon of empty towns in China is being reported more and more. Apartments and office complexes are sold but left empty, bought for speculation. This again is very different from European post-war planning where new towns were built specifically to solve the urban housing shortage. Construction has become an economic motive in itself, note Provoost and Vanstiphout, the development of new towns today is ‘not a means of tempering the socio-economic consequences of progress, but a way of lending that progress a helping hand.’ (p. 20). They identify six main motivations behind contemporary new town development in Asia: to achieve environmental sustainability (eco cities), to represent political power of national or local governments (political cities), to offer ‘a retreat from the existing city’ (enclave cities, large residential towns), ‘to attract investment’ and boost the development of less developed regions (economic cities), to use

technology as attraction (high tech cities) and to provide housing to the masses (shelter cities) (pp. 14-17). The Wuxi case in this study could be described as belonging mostly to the third category; it is part of a large residential town created by private real estates. The Tangshan case could be described as a mix of the first, second, forth and fifth category; an ecological, political, economic and high tech city.

4.3

INSTITUTIONAL SETTING

Managing urban growth is a key issue for land use policy in China.

Since the 1980s China has applied urban containment strategies to preserve agricultural land—basic farmland (Zhao, 2010). The policies include city size limits; restrictions on new development in agricultural areas; intensive, high-density land use; and greenbelts for the larger cities (Ibid). The (regional) development strategy of building new towns to decentralize over-crowded and fast-growing cities is widely accepted in China. New town policy is applied in master plans for the large cities, near which compact new towns are planned to protect farmland from urban sprawl; to alleviate traffic congestion, pollution, inner city deterioration and rising housing prices; and to accommodate new urban residents (Ibid). While some new towns are built as independent towns to relieve pressure on the large cities, new towns are also built on green field sites to improve conditions in less developed regions. Recent new town development in China began in the 1990s, and during the last decade, hundreds of new towns have been planned and constructed, many of them as eco cities (Zhou, 2012).

Decentralization

To implement market reforms, the state has decentralized a lot of its power and the decentralized governance structure has made municipal governments very influential. Urban development has become a local concern, where the mayors have a lot to say as urban planning is under their charge. The authors of a recent World Bank report shed light on the complex interrelations between local governance, municipal finance and urban land-use planning (Liu and Salzberg, 2012). In the report, Liu and Salzberg point out the problematic couplings between municipal finance, land concessions and urban sprawl. While municipal governments have wide-ranging responsibilities, the financial sources available to them are limited, there is no property or land taxation system to rely on (Ibid).

In order to to finance infrastructure and public services the municipal governments therefore depend on the revenues they get from sales of land use rights, write Liu and Salzberg, and land concessions to attract

investments. Municipalities convert rural land to urban land and sell the land use rights for the urban land; thereby they generate large revenues.

In the last decade, land concessions have to a large extent financed urban development, the revenues from land concessions make up a large portion of the municipal governmental incomes (Ibid). Infrastructure development and associated land concessions are very profitable, note Liu and Salzberg, therefore rapid urban expansion often consumes land without consideration to local people and the environment.

Municipal finance through land concessions generates urban sprawl, which clearly illustrates that centrally formulated containment policy is challenged and subverted by financial incentives at the local level.

John Friedmann (2005) has described Chinese public authorities as amphibious, referring to the fact that municipal governments, enterprises and private developers form growth coalitions where private and public interests mix. Public authorities come to act as developers, acting for profit, allowing market forces to operate freely. This urban entrepreneurialism, boosted by the decentralized governance structure, makes it possible for cities to act quickly, and progressive mayors to contribute to development leaps, but the reverse can also be the case. There is a lack of cooperation across administrative levels and jurisdictional boundaries; the planning system is fragmented (Song and Ding, 2009). It is difficult to coordinate overall policy at the regional level since competition between cities prevents the necessary backup of the common goals of the regional plan. The Chinese planning community calls for no more decentralization of government. Instead, Chinese planners seek more effective urban planning control and governance. The authors of the above mentioned World Bank report (2012) point out the importance of breaking the links between land use, municipal finance and urban sprawl and evaluating the performance of cities more comprehensively. They emphasize the need for more sustainable municipal finance mechanisms—property or land tax—to get away from the dependency on land concessions (Liu and Saltzberg, 2012).

Urban planning

The rapid pace of development is overwhelming for planning practitioners.

Master plans often fail to be adapted to the many unforeseen changes and the plans are quickly outdated. Due to rather loose implementation mechanisms, mayors often have the power to deviate from the plans, and they tend to use the rapid development pace as a pretext for modifying plans to fit their own short-term interests (their term in office is usually four to five years). Planning regulation has become stricter after the mid 2000s. Policy changes to better protect farmland, with emphasis

on the coordinated urban-rural development, as well as more public participation and a strengthened sustainability agenda, were introduced with the Urban and Rural Planning Act of 2008 (Yeh et al., 2011).¹ While the urban planning profession has been closely connected to the goal of market-oriented economic development, with the urban planner as a neutral technical professional supporting the economic goals, the profession is changing. American urban planner Daniel Abramson writes, ‘I expect the discipline of planning will diversify from the current emphasis on enabling economic growth to include a stronger regulatory function, greater emphasis on maintaining environmental quality, and stronger analytical, communicative, and advocacy roles.’ (Abramson, 2006, p. 197).

4.4