ABSTRACT

This chapter argues that the party-state's overarching paradigm of ecological civilisation and the contemporary process of ecological construction hinge critically on spatial planning, and analyses how authoritative discourse and expert practices of spatial planning work to define environmental value at a national scale. The chapter outlines the context for the enrolment of eco-urbanisation planning as a key expression of the policy and practice of ecological construction, and then analyses this enrolment in discourse and policy. The chapter then turns to the implementation of this programme of national spatial restructuring, which is taking place in hundreds of master planned eco-urbanisation projects around the country. Planning practice in a model eco-city project in Yixing, Jiangsu Province is analysed in the context of national policy and authoritative discourse. The chapter argues that, driven by the political goals of the party-state, this model constitutes an ideological conflation of eco-urbanisation with ecological construction and its historically established notions of national development and modernisation.