Remaking Sustainable Urbanism:

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REMAKING
SUSTAINABLE
URBANISM SPACE, SCALE AND
GOVERNANCE IN
THE NEW URBAN ERA

Edited by
XIAOLING ZHANG
Remaking Sustainable Urbanism
 Xiaoling Zhang
Editor

Remaking
Sustainable
Urbanism
Space, Scale and Governance
in the New Urban Era
Editor
Xiaoling Zhang
Department of Public Policy
City University of Hong Kong
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
Shenzhen Research Institute
City University of Hong Kong
Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.
71834005, 71673232)

ISBN 978-981-13-3349-1 ISBN 978-981-13-3350-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3350-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962024

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein
or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover design by Ran Shauli

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte
Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721,
Singapore
 Foreword

Urbanisation is undoubtedly one of the key defining trends of the mod-

ern era. An ever-increasingly proportion of the world’s population is
destined to live in cities. This significant shift in where people live is of
global significance. Cities are already driving the global economy and
the world’s major cities are acquiring a status which often challenges
that of the nation state. Cities therefore increasingly lie at the nexus
of a whole range of different policy issues, not least those that relate
to sustainability. But the debate about the future must be based on an
understanding of how the inhabitants of cities interact with the mate-
rial fabric of the built environment and its supporting infrastructure.
Sustainable urbanisation is undoubtedly one of the defining challenges
of the twenty first Century.
There is of course an increasing acceptance that sustainability is of
central importance to the future of the planet. But the argument is in
essence tautological. It is relatively easy to agree that sustainability is
important, but much more difficult to agree what it actually means.
This interpretive flexibility is of course both a strength and weakness.
That sustainability is subject to so many different interpretations makes
it relevant to the widest possible range of different constituencies.

v
vi   Foreword

And yet this very same characteristic also often results in different con-
stituencies debating very different issues with little prospect of ever
reaching closure. It has become a cliché to refer to the three pillars of
sustainability in terms of its environmental, environmental and eco-
nomic dimensions. It is of course important not to focus on any one
dimension to the detrimental of the others. But even if the meaning of
the three components can be agreed, it still remains necessary to secure
agreement on the necessary trade-offs. And different logics inevitably
prevail in different locations.
Sustainability is not only illusive in terms of its definition, it is also
illusive empirically. There is undoubtedly a relationship between how
sustainability is promoted and the way in which it is practised. But the
relationship is by no means straightforward, and is certainty not deter-
ministic. Perhaps the most important issue is to ensure we collectively
learn from the mistakes of the past. At the same time we must also com-
mit ourselves to learning from the inevitable mistakes of the future.
Meanwhile CO2 emissions continue apace and warnings about global
warming become ever more alarming. We know that the cities of the
future have to operate differently from the cities of the past, but man-
aging this transition is categorically not straightforward, and different
approaches are undoubtedly necessary in different locations. There is
no ‘one size fits all’. Certainty we need professionals who are commit-
ted to making the world a better place. We also need professionals who
are orientated towards taking action in partnership with city communi-
ties. Above all we need a stronger conceptual framework for sustainable
urbanism and how it might best be mobilised in different locations. It
is the latter domain to which this important book contributes with par-
ticular emphasis on space, scale and governance. Important sub-themes
include policy mobility, technology and planning.
The book has an obvious and justifiable bias towards China where
the concept of ‘eco-city’ is arguably most developed. It comprises con-
tributions from a range of diverse perspectives and often seeks to chal-
lenge established conventions. The emphasis on theoretical critique is
especially important in moving the debate forward. Coverage is broad
and interdisciplinary, ranging from ‘green washing’ to issues of social
inclusiveness. The contents of the book undoubtedly provide a rich
 Foreword   vii

basis for rethinking sustainable urbanism in the new era. It has rele-
vance not only to China, but to the developing concept of ‘eco-cities’
globally. It is especially notable for offering a refreshing counter-balance
to the persuasive discourse of the smart city whereby the problems of
sustainable urbanism are supposedly subject to a technological fix. The
book offers a narrative of sustainable urbanism which projects into the
future. And yet, crucially, the narrative remains connected to the policy
trajectories of the past.

Reading, UK Prof. Stuart Green

School of the Built Environment
University of Reading
 Contents

Introduction 1
Xiaoling Zhang

Part I The Theoretical Critique of the Sustainable

Urbanism Narrative

Of Tesla and Eco-city: Urban Sustainability as Territorial

Local Trap? 19
C. P. Pow

Making an Urban Ecotopia in China: Knowledge, Power,

and Governmentality 37
Lili Wang and Xiaoling Zhang

Political Ecology of Chinese Smart Eco-cities 57

Linjun Xie, May Tan-Mullins and Ali Cheshmehzangi

ix
x   Contents

Part II The Dynamics of “Glocal” Governance

and Policy Mobility of Sustainable Urbanism

City Branding in Chinese Cities: From Tactical

Greenwashing to Successful Industrial Transformation 81
Martin de Jong, Meiling Han and Haiyan Lu

From Shannon to Shenzhen and Back: Sustainable

Urbanism and Inter-city Partnerships in China and Europe 101
Federico Caprotti

Policy Mobility in Green Urbanism: A Comparative Case

Study of Suzhou and Tianjin 121
Yang Fu and Xiaoling Zhang

Part III Social Inclusiveness of Sustainable Urbanization

in China

Making Urbanization Socially Inclusive: Integrating

In-Situ Rural Development with City-Centered Urbanization 147
Jieming Zhu

Livelihood Transitions During China’s Ecological

Urbanization: An Ethnographic Observation 161
I-Chun Catherine Chang

The Quality of Life of the Land-Lost Peasants and Informal

Development on the Rural–Urban Fringe in Beijing 185
Pengjun Zhao and Mengzhu Zhang

Index 219
 List of Figures

Making an Urban Ecotopia in China: Knowledge, Power,

and Governmentality
Fig. 1 Foucault’s framework of governmentality (adapted from
Ettlinger 2011) 42
Fig. 2 The location of SILCC in Shenzhen 45
Fig. 3 The layout of the SILCC and its successive pilot (red),
extension (orange), and comprehensive (green) development
zones as stipulated in the Master Plan 47

Policy Mobility in Green Urbanism: A Comparative Case Study

of Suzhou and Tianjin
Fig. 1 Punctuated equilibrium model in Chinese context 130
Fig. 2 Evironmental complaints made by letters and visits
to environmental protection Bureaus (Mol and Carter 2006) 132
Fig. 3 China’s investment in pollution control
(Zhang and Wen 2008) 133
Fig. 4 Policy mobility process of SIP and SSEC after the
environmental turn in China 140

xi
xii   List of Figures

Livelihood Transitions During China’s Ecological Urbanization:

An Ethnographic Observation
Fig. 1 Traditional village houses before the eco-city development 162
Fig. 2 One of the banners on the relocation site 163
Fig. 3 Fast construction project completed by Dong’s team 172
Fig. 4 The expanded eco-city 178

The Quality of Life of the Land-Lost Peasants and Informal

Development on the Rural–Urban Fringe in Beijing
Fig. 1 Why the self-imposed land-lost peasants tend to have
a good quality of life (Source The authors) 193
Fig. 2 The location of Zhenggezhuang village in Beijing
(Source The authors) 198
Fig. 3 The industrial buildings and office buildings built
by Hongfu group in Zhenggezhuang village 206
Fig. 4 The resettled community for the land-lost peasants in
Zhenggezhuang village (Source The authors) 207
Fig. 5 The peasant houses in the village beside Zhenggezhuang
village (Source The authors) 208
 List of Tables

Of Tesla and Eco-city: Urban Sustainability as Territorial

Local Trap?
Table 1 SSTEC project timeline 25
Table 2 SSTEC’s 26 Key Performance Indicators 28

Making an Urban Ecotopia in China: Knowledge, Power,

and Governmentality
Table 1 Various key indicators and low-carbon targets of the SILCC 50

City Branding in Chinese Cities: From Tactical Greenwashing

to Successful Industrial Transformation
Table 1 City brand identities and city labels in the six global cities 90
Table 2 City brand identities and city labels in the nine
national-level cities 92

xiii
xiv   List of Tables

Policy Mobility in Green Urbanism: A Comparative Case Study

of Suzhou and Tianjin
Table 1 Key environmental decisions and legislations from
1996 to 2004 137

The Quality of Life of the Land-Lost Peasants and Informal

Development on the Rural–Urban Fringe in Beijing
Table 1 The comparison between government-led formal
land requisition and village-led informal land development 191
Table 2 The changes in land use and population in Beijing from
1980 to 2010 195
Table 3 The comparison of income distribution between
land-lost peasant households and urban resident
households in Zhenggezhuang village 201
Table 4 The living expenses of land-lost peasant households
and urban households who live in the village 202
Table 5 The changes of source of household income before
and after land acquisition 204
Table 6 The average housing area of land-lost peasants
in Zhenggezhuang village 208
Table 7 The happiness of land-lost peasants 209
Table 8 Aspects of life that land-lost peasants are unhappy about 209
Table 9 The subjective feelings of the land-lost peasants about life 210
Table 10 Land-lost peasants’ expectations for their future 212
Table 11 Land-lost peasants’ expectations for children 212
 Introduction
Xiaoling Zhang

The Rising Eco-city Paradigm Worldwide

The history of humanity has witnessed and nurtured various ideals of
“good cities”. Such ideals are embodied in the different theories and
practices of planning and city making across history and space. Over
two thousand years ago, Aristotle summarized the meaning of urban-
ism: “people come together in cities in order to live: they remain
together in order to live the good life”. In the following centuries, var-
ious visionaries promoted different models for creating “good cities”.
Some of these were utopian in the extreme, others were more down
to earth (Friedmann 1987). Some of the more famous contributors to

X. Zhang (*)
Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong,
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
e-mail: xiaoling.zhang@cityu.edu.hk
Shenzhen Research Institute, City University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen,
People’s Republic of China
© The Author(s) 2019 1
X. Zhang (ed.), Remaking Sustainable Urbanism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3350-7_1
2    
X. Zhang

the development of thinking include such luminaries as Robert Owen,

Charles Fourier, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, William Morris, Le Corbusier,
Ebenezer Howard, Louis Mumford, Frank Lloyd Wright, John
Friedmann and Peter Hall (to name but a few). Huxley (2006) reviews
these various contributions to discern three forms of spatial rationality
that have emerged from the, often tortured, history of urban planning
and urban governance, disposable spatial rationality, generative spatial
rationality, and vitalist spatial rationality. Disposable spatial rational-
ity aims at “drawing boundaries and producing order”, e.g., the Model
Town of Victoria in Australia in the nineteenth century. Generative
spatial rationality combines medical and biological metaphors with
modern technology to combat diseases and moral decay. The exem-
plary model in this case is Richardson’s (1876) description of Hygeia:
A City of Health. Vitalist spatial rationality focuses on fostering social
and spiritual development, as illustrated by Patrick Geddes’ planning
theories for asocial cohesion and harmony. These and other visions for
the construction of “good cities” have recently culminated in, and been
enrolled into, the “sustainability” paradigm.
In recent decades, the world has increasingly accepted that the Earth
is facing a global environmental crisis, and that countries have to band
together to rise to the challenge. This broad acceptance of the environment
has combined with the increased aspirations of the urban middle class to
trigger a massive eco-city movement worldwide (Fu and Zhang 2017). In
the beginning, the goal was to (re)build the city as an “ecological healthy
city” for the wellbeing of residents (Register 1987). However, as time
goes by, the focus has shifted to the economic value of such city-making
efforts (Suzuki et al. 2010). The eco-city movement, especially since the
2008 global financial crisis, has risen to provide a new “green stimulus”
for economic growth (Brahmbhatt 2013; Caprotti 2014). The eco-city has
undoubtedly become a new city-making ideal worldwide. Joss (2011) has
developed a typology of eco-cities that divides them into three categories
of new development, expansion, and retrofit, at three distinctive stages of
planning, construction, and implementation respectively. A series of new
secondary concepts have also been created, including eco-cities, sustain-
able cities, low-carbon cities, zero-carbon cities, and green cities. These
serve not only to highlight the various aspects of eco-development but also
to carve particular market niches for the developments. However, these
 Introduction    
3

secondary concepts—or sub-brands—sometimes create confusion and

ambiguity rather than clarity and coherence (Hanson and Lee 2015).
It is important to recognize that, while city planning and city-making
strategies are pursued to achieve the “public good” (Pacione 2009: 158),
they are essentially mechanisms of value allocation (Johnson 1989:
14–17), as well as being profoundly influenced by specific historical
contexts and socio-political apparatus (Yeh and Wu 1999). This book
aims to situate the rising eco-city movement in broader prevailing social
contexts. In particular, it focuses on how spatial relations condition such
practices of various levels, and how the movement is also restructuring
spatial relations in various contexts.

The Increasing Importance of Space

and Scale in Global Urban Governance

We now live in a truly global world (Harvey 1989; Giddens 1990, 1994;
Sassen 1991). Since the 1970s, globalization has gained momentum and
radically reshaped the global economic, political and social landscape.
It has become embodied in much more extensive capital flows, stretched
social ties, and connected localities and institutions. Globalization, the
compression of space and time (Harvey 1989), or the transformation of
space and time through “action at a distance” (Giddens 1994), has also
profoundly remolded accepted ways of city building and urban govern-
ance (Olds 2002). Firstly, capital globalization, or the dramatic expansion
and reconstruction of the global financial system (Olds 2002; Scott 2001)
has improved the availability of finance. Secondly, the advent of modern
trans-national and trans-continental transportation has increased personal
mobility and hence immigration (Roy 2011). Thirdly, alongside the move-
ment of capital and people is the increasing flow of technology, informa-
tion, and knowledge on the global scale (Ward 2006; McCann 2011). An
emergent “global intelligence corps” increasingly act as carriers of new ideas
that are routinely appropriated for the purposes of localized urban develop-
ment (Olds 2002). Meanwhile, globalization has also increased inter-city
competition (Anttiroiko 2015). Cities now have to compete for invest-
ment, fame, and talent on the global scale; hence, they are under the con-
stant pressure to look to global models for inspiration and guidance.
4    
X. Zhang

A significant theoretical implication of globalization is the rise in

the importance attached to space and scale in critical scholarship. This
is manifested in various debates since the 1990s, notably in respect of
issues of de-nationalization and the rise of supranational organizations.
Such debates tend to play out across a series of dichotomies, includ-
ing: global vs. national (Swyngedouw 1997), glocalization (the global
vs. local dichotomy) (Roberston 1995; Swyngedouw 1997), the rise of
city-regions in the global context (Hall 2002; Scott 2001), and central–
local relationships within the nation (Taylor 1997; Shen 2007). Cox
(1998) identified two scalar processes of spaces of dependence (defined
by more local social relationships and for more local interests without
substitutes elsewhere) and spaces of engagement (rising from efforts to
secure local dependence through engaging institutions or relationships
on other scales or elsewhere; more “global”). He further argued that the
tensions between these fixities and mobilities give rise to the form of
urban politics in capitalist societies.
As the “relational” nature of social processes is increasingly accepted,
the conceptualization of scale in urban studies also shifts from the pre-
vious dichotomic division between “global-national” or “global-local” to
a more fluid epistemology (Brenner 2000). In the field of urban stud-
ies, Jacobs (2012) summarizes the two variants of relational thinking.
The first is represented by policy mobility studies that focus on the
movement of urban ideas and models (also see Roy’s (2009) notion of
“worlding”). The second is represented by assemblage theory, which
highlights the “immanent effect of the association of heterogeneous
elements” (Jacobs 2012: 416). Others have argued for another variant
regarding the reterritorialization of state governance (Popescu 2008;
Addie 2013). Shen (2007), for example, analyzes the reterritorialization
of state power in China through the downscaling of the fiscal autonomy
and responsibility to localities.
This book aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on global pol-
icy mobility, focusing in particular on the movement in support of eco-
city ideas. It should be noted that multiple terms indicating the same
phenomena exist in the literature. For example, Roy (2011) introduces
the concept of “worlding” to denote the processes through which urban
strategies travel, though not without restraints, among Asian cities and
 Part I
The Theoretical Critique of the Sustainable
Urbanism Narrative
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