ABSTRACT
China's urbanisation seems to be at a crossroads: should it continue the old pathway of rapid growth with grave challenges or should it pursue a new post-growth trajectory of sustainable and high-quality development. This bifurcation has dominated the recent discourse of planning Chinese cities. Building upon this discourse, this chapter seeks new directions in Chinese metropolitan planning through investigating the latest planning for Shanghai. It compares Shanghai 2035, the city's latest master plan with two historical master plans since the early 1980s to identify new planning thinking and approaches. It further compares the latest master plans of Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen to unpack how the ‘new era’ national development strategy and the recent national planning system reform have influenced metropolitan planning visions and practices. It then examines the planning of Shanghai in the regional context of the Yangtze River delta region, which aims to break through administrative borders to achieve integrated, coordinated regional development. These historical, comparative, and multi-scalar analyses reveal explicit new directions in Chinese metropolitan planning in terms of global aspiration, national mission, and regional coordination. While these new directions inform an understanding of Chinese urban imaginaries in the coming decades, uncertainty and challenges exist in achieving them, especially in reconciling the grow-green paradox.
