ABSTRACT
Urban planning is an effective tool for maintaining the interest of the status quo and for establishing order in the land market. There are many examples of the success of plan-making as a positive instrument for socioeconomic change. However, there are no mechanisms in the planning system to generate proactive measures to ensure the implementation of plans. China’s current urban developmental planning paradigm emerged from unique historical circumstances. Post-1978 deliberate urbanization resulted from pre-1978 suppressed urbanization, which created enormous shortages of urban land and built form. The huge pent-up demand for physical expansion to accommodate rural-urban migrants spawned a planning system which catered to the demands of a growing economy. The instruments of strategic concept plans and flexible development control employed by the local developmental state cannot be ignored as important contributing factors to the spectacular post-1978 economic growth. The essence of this developmental planning is threefold. Preference is given to newly emerging interests over status quo interests, land revenues are mobilized to develop infrastructure and public facilities, and planning is made responsive to market change. However, real long-term sustainable growth in China will require further institutional change beyond this transitional urban planning paradigm.
