HKU Moodle

Course Description

This course examines the China’s urban planning system and its changes, policy, and practices using concrete examples, thoroughly grounded research and academic experience to support students’ learning. It provides a wealth of knowledge of urban and regional planning in China under the process of transition from a centrally planned socialist economy to an emerging market in the world. The course will then focus on urban and regional planning practice in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) and its major cities where the transitional economy is evolving rapidly. Issues surrounding the institutionalisation of planning regulations, systems and hierarchy; the formulation and implementation of plans; and problems of development control will be examined.

Course Learning Outcomes (CLO):

Course Themes

The following themes will be explored in URBP7010. Endeavour to relate them to your discussions, group presentations and essays.

 History and Anatomy of Chinese Urban and Regional Plans

Discuss how knowing the components and relations that make up existing urban and regional plans can help planners make better decisions and directions for the future. In short, how can knowing history, context and structures help with problem-solving? To do this, one can look at governance relations and the various professions involved in planning processes. One may also examine how more conventional central-planning approaches can co-exist with bottom-up feedback loops, to examine understand how Chinese planning respond to regional local differences and broader global markets. The geographic and historic focus is 20^th and 21^st century China, with an emphasis on the Greater Bay Area.

Planning in China vs. Chinese Planning

Discuss how “planning in China” may differ from “Chinese planning”. To do so, we can draw from some aspects of post-colonial critiques on imbalance knowledge exchange, and ask, what are the relevance and the limits of “Western” that are introduced into or applied in China and Asia in general? In this regard, we can ask how space and scale is differently conceptualised in Asia (especially Sinosphere countries) as opposed to the West. Additionally, how is the individual and/or collective conceptualised and experienced. In turn, how might these differences generate relations between the State, the regions, the urban and rural areas that are uniquely Asian or Chinese. In short, how to contextualise planning concepts and practice for a Chinese planning theory and practice.

Human in a Mega-Region

Discuss what constitutes the ‘human’ in relation to mega-regions. When thinking of regional plans, one’s attention usually gravitates towards larger systems and connections. Yet these large systems and connections, when implemented as infrastructure (e.g., transport, economic centres, etc.), are always experienced at the human scale. As such, how can the human be incorporated at the regional planning level? The cross-boundary mode of living/working be one way to conceptualise how the human is incorporated at the regional level. This is because cross-boundary means planning for how people might live in more than one urban centre or traverse rural-urban boundaries daily. Can we consider cross-boundary movement as more than a matter of expediency, and be more attuned to the human?