规划问道
The editors of Urban Planning International have asked me to share my observations on developments of urban development in China. I am doing so albeit with some reluctance. Though I have been travelling to and working in China for almost two decades, I feel my knowledge about the country and my understanding of urban development politics in the country is still marginal. All my reading about urban development trends and challenges is exclusively relying on English publications. Hence my remarks are neither based on empirical research nor proven by quantitative data. They stem from my own visual observations, when staying in Chinese cities. They are the outcome of discussions with staff and students, of accidental and fragmentary reading of project documents, Chinese and Western newspapers, as well as of articles in professional and academic journals.
Urban development is a never-ending learning process. Governments, at all tiers of planning and decision-making, of party members and administrative staff, of developers, investors, architects, planners, city development engineers and media as well as of citizens and numerous groups of the civil society learn from being involved in planning exercises.
In this brief essay I will focus and reflect on eight selected observations. They describe the enormous urban development challenges Chinese local governments and urban planners are facing in their day-to-day work. These observations are:
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The pressure of time;
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The vanishing identity of Chinese cities,
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Planners are designing great plans, but are hardly involved in implementing their ambitious concepts;
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The impression that regeneration is for developers not for residents;
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The unconditional surrender to the automobile;
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The Unreflected power of city branding, slogans and numbers;
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The flagship odyssey to modern culture;
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The negligence of local knowledge and people in urban development.
I will not make any suggestions of how to face and respond to the challenges observed. The observations tell by themselves the pathways to be taken, when preparing for a future of cities, where people matter.
1 The pressure of time
Time has become a precious good in the 21st century. The evolving stand-by society forces public and private investors to optimize time management of citizens, industries and services, to invest in infrastructure, which is speeding up mobility and accelerating communication, such as high-speed rail, highways and big-data collection and communication, speeding up production processes and service deliveries, or just consuming fast food. Stress, burnout or obesity are symptoms that can be observed as an unavoidable outcome of such developments. In such an environment more and more people and families loose their quality of life.
Suffering from the speed, citizens search for compensation. They strive for slow food and yoga, reinvent Tai Chi, praise simple temple life, and book meditation holidays or even escape for a week, a month or even a sabbatical year from hectic life styles. More and more psychiatrists offer their advice. However, quality of life of citizens is often sacrificed to speed and quality. It seems there is no time to work on longer-term urban visions that are based on local endogenous capital, no time to reflect on improvements of quality of life. Quality of life is more than consumption; it is the quality of the natural environment, clean air and water, food safety, access to leisure grounds and public space, and it is the availability of time to be with family and friends, to learn, or to enjoy travelling to scenic cultural location.
Time in modern China is always short. Mainly for economic reasons, rapid urbanization is high on the political agenda in China. Market-led policies, globalization, new I&C technologies and the pursuit for efficiency and competitiveness, speed up life and work in cities and regions. Hence town expansion, infrastructure development and urban regeneration projects have to be planned and implemented within extremely brief time limits. There is no time for learning from mistakes of earlier projects, no time for applied local research, no time for raising the competence of planners, not sufficient time for involving local residents and businesses or for newly arriving citizens. Urban development is a long process. Strategic urban development policies have to prepare for such developments and life styles. It has to find balanced pathways between speeding-up and slowing down life in cities and regions.
2 The vanished identity of Chinese cities
It seems there is also no time in China to sharpen local identity. Admittedly it is extremely difficult to design and promote city identity in rapidly growing cities. The identity of cities is based on cultural, religious, social and economic history of local communities, on land ownership patterns and on interventions by city builders (architects and engineers). The identity of a city is also reflected by the availability of local building materials and by the craftsmanship of local crafts. In the past buildings were not designed by architects: they were built by carpenters and masons who passed their knowledge of local building materials and their professional competence from one generation to the other. These house builders were aware of the importance of the local climate: they knew the lifestyles of users and the requirements of businesses. All over rural China buildings in small towns and villages reflect such competence. This competence is still in the country, though it is not any more requested, when developing modern high-rise buildings in megacities.
Except a few smaller urban quarters that benefit from a local scenic, historical or cultural local identity, most Chinese cities look alike. They are locations of more or less attractive of high-rise buildings with broad transport corridors in between. It is getting more and more difficult to identify distinctiveness.
Some cities, as for example Nanjing, have built Disney-like entertainment quarters, where new functional buildings in Chinese architecture. They accommodate a wide range of shops, restaurants, cafes, art galleries and even a few adjacent residential quarters in Hutong style for affluent citizens. These newly built “creative” islands that are preserving only a few old structures have become very popular among young local residents and foreign visitors. They are nicely decorated picturesque islands in otherwise not very scenic urban scenic environments. Though they contribute little to the local identity of the city as whole. Similarly, occasional efforts of commercial developers to reproduce European identity in China (e.g. Anting, Hallstatt or Thames Town) are no templates for a new Chinese city identity.
Equally the passion of Chinese mayors for flagship architecture, built by renowned international stars is not an appropriate way to bring a new identity to cities. Such projects may be good for marketing brochures, though they will not contribute to build-up new identities to Chinese cities. As a rule these projects could be in any global city. European cities, city centres, have obtained their particular, tourist attracting identity over hundreds of years. Suburbanized landscapes of larger European cities, such as Paris, Berlin or Milan, are equally not charming and spectacular.
Creating new blue-print identities in large cities is indeed a challenge. The speed with which they have to be built to accommodate millions of rural peasants leaves no time for developing new urban identity. But identity building needs times, not 10 or 20 years. And identity needs people. Otherwise it is just a decorative cover, a wrapped puppet, a fancy dress over a soul less mannequin. City building processes are happing over generations and with people.
3 Planners are designing great plans, but are hardly involved in implementing their ambitious concepts
Urban development is a never-ending learning process. All public, private enterprises and citizens involved in urban planning and decision-making processes learn from each other, from experience and local knowledge, from requirements and commitment, from errors and mistakes. Urban planning in China City development is still very much based on well-designed land use master plans. Urban planners are artists that are designing great plans, but they are hardly involved in implementing their plans. They principally plan for developers not for people. The plan is not the outcome of long and often controversial and essentially open planning processes, where future residents and businesses are involved. Strategic urban development is not a collection of impressive data and spatial information, not a catalogue of aims and projects; it is not a government agenda that explains where, and what should be done and when. Urban planning is not land-use planning, just assigning functional uses to spaces, while economic stakeholders and local politicians express quite different requirements. A land use master plan is certainly not a blueprint for implementation it is rather a road map for future community action. The road map develops and illustrates ways and means to implement a vision, once it has been openly discussed and accepted among public and private stakeholders. Any planning concept reflects the politico-administrative and socio-economic conditions in a time period, when it is written. Consequently, strategic plans have to be continuously revised and updated.. Urban strategies require permanent adaptation. Corrections have to be made, once conditions change, new political priorities have to be set, once selected dimensions of the strategy turned out to be inadequate, stakeholders change their opinion, industries go bankrupt or implementation programmes do not bring the expected results. Consequently continuous assessment of the road map is indispensable. Corrections are unavoidable. Planning is not architecture, though even a building, once built, requires continuous care and maintenance. Hence a plan requires continuous monitoring by internal and external observers, the development of assessment criteria (GDP figures are certainly insufficient) and the permanent collection of quantitative and qualitative information. Obviously, such a process-oriented concept of planning in urban planning has also to be taught in planning schools. Learning how to impress local government administrations and mayors with Impressive visual presentations does not prepare for the future.
4 Regeneration for developers not for residents
The loss of city identity is very much linked to the obsession to modernize cities by demolishing already built-up quarters, be it Hutong areas, urban villages or even social housing of the sixties and seventies. Obviously this has an economic rationale and is often linked to land availability. It is certainly easier and more profitable, and certainly much faster to build new development on land that is cleared from pervious uses and users, and to compensate land owners or residents than to start time consuming processes to regenerate quarters and equip old houses with modern up-to-date services. Regeneration hat involve citizens, local businesses and groups of the civil society, once the need has been articulated, is not a legal requirement. More recently, however, new awareness for the value of old buildings has started to change urban development approaches in some cities. Moreover, the vanishing identity of Chinese cities and the resistance of urban villagers are bringing excessive demolition processes to a halt. It remains a huge challenge to review urban redevelopment policies and slow down urban regeneration. In European cities redevelopment and revitalization of housing with people has become the conventional approach of urban regeneration. There, land use regulation and related enforcement are well established. Landowner rights are protected by law and supported by powerful lawyers. In addition media alert dominate local planning processes. Admittedly, time pressure is less a challenge in Europe.
5 The unconditional surrender to the automobile
In the 21st century cars in China matter more than people, the power of the car industry and the consumption desire of citizens make the automobile industry a key policy field of the Chinese government. The long arm of the government drives this industry. The car is given a key role in developing jobs and prosperity, in making China an industrial world power. Consequently, though may be unintentionally, the automobile industry is guiding and dominating urban development in the country. The dream of each Chinese household, to own and drive a car and this dream is nurturing and driving the development of automobile industry. Transportation planners and architects accept the unconditional surrender and do their best to accommodate that dream. They make sure that the cars can be used in cities. Enormous road networks are planned, ring roads are built, streets are widened, walkways and bicycle lanes are narrowed, parking structures are erected, and villages are demolished to accommodate crossings and flyovers. The more roads are built in the city, the more they are used, and the more often they are congested and polluted. Much unproductive time is spent in larger Chinese cities on congested roads.
Cars matter more than people. Public space, other than the space used for accommodating car mobility, is disappearing or privatised. Elderly citizens seem to accept it. They are rather hesitant to defend their traditional spaces on public land. Younger citizens in turn may rather spend their time to work for more consumption. They, it seems, do not bother. However, there is a hope. The incredible success of smart bike-sharing in some Chinese cities will hopefully cause creative architects and planners, and even developers to rethink their out-dated planning approaches and design new urban villages within large cities, where bicycles and pedestrians dominate again over cars as it has been the case in China 50 years ago when work places and housing were mixed. In the 21st century, the concept of a functional division of land use planning is largely out-dated. It reflects the spirit of the old type of large scale industrialization not the opportunities of the digital revolution and its implications for industrial production.
6 The unreflected power of branding, slogans and numbers
The Chinese planning community is obsessed when it comes to branding, slogans and numbers. Yesterday the creative city and the eco-city, today the sponge city and the knowledge city. Which slogan tomorrow? Such fashionable urban development paradigms dominate public discourse. The planning community and urban marketing agencies like hiding behind such paradigms, when presenting concepts for urban development. Supported by popular media they seem to believe that urban development concepts sell better, when branded by a mainstream slogan, even if they are aware that creative cities are not really creative, eco-cities not sustainable and smart cities not really smart.
Mainstream city paradigms launched by central government agencies, architects, consultants, urban marketing agencies and popular media, are often imported from the West. As a rule they are just well articulated slogans that are used to please local policy makers, to attract financial funds from the government or to sell projects (and land) to investors. Whether it is the compact city, the sustainable city, the creative city, the smart city or the sponge city, all these and other fashionable city paradigms are inappropriate road maps into urban futures, they just point to neglected policy areas of the past and reflect selected and partial policy pathways for urban futures, promoted by central government ministries. It is interesting to observe that Singapore is often used as a city development model, and cooperation with Singapore has become a city brand in itself. Though no Chinese city can copy Singapore and it would not be a good idea to do so anyway,
More than others Chinese seem to like ranking and numbers. To be the best (in school or as a university), the first (in sports), or even the wealthiest is essential. Cities wish to be better than others, more attractive to foreign investors, tourists or qualified labour. In well-designed urban marketing brochures cities demonstrate their rank and prove their strength by impressive figures. Only GDP figures seem to matter in urban development. Figures impress audiences, even if they are meaningless in an urban context, like GDP figures for a local land use plan. Local governments are obsessed (or even forced?), to demonstrate that they have achieved more economic growth. From a mere economic perspective, and supported by priority given to an economic indicator like the GDP to measure economic growth urbanization and the concentration of economic development in a few metropolitan cities and city regions is driving the modernization of a country. People-oriented urban development, however, requires a human perspective from below, not GDP figures.
7 The flagship odyssey to modern culture
China is well known for its architecture, scenic villages, its calligraphy, sculptures and other treasures of fine and performing arts. China has an extremely rich culture. Many UNESCO sites protect the cultural heritage of the country. They attract millions of foreign visitors to the country and serve as perceptible history lessons for millions of Chinese young people.
Nonetheless city governments often complain about the lack of modern local cultural infrastructure and facilities for citizens. Some cities believe, culture in the city requires the presence of modern museums, concert halls or even and opera houses and they spend millions to fill the cultural gap. By asking international star architects to build cultural flagships they hope to receive media attention and visitors. Though they soon realize, however, when aiming to fill these structures with cultural life that the flagships rather reflect Western than Chinese culture. They learn that cultural development in cities is not promoted by inviting foreign opera, ballet or theatre companies, or renowned orchestras or pop bands, raising the interest of young generations.
This is also the case in cities where private art collectors sponsor new museums of modern art to show their collections and promote related cultural activities. Such projects are crucial for the cultural development in a city. However, as a rule, they are aiming at very small groups of educated citizens only. To promote modern Chinese not Western cultural development in cities, they have to embed into broader local cultural strategies. It seems that developing such strategies is not yet an issue of local urban development.
Developing vibrant cultural life in modern cities requires more than building cultural flagships. It requires longer-term local cultural and educational policies that are raising the creativity and cultural interests of younger generation beyond the digital consumption of images and music. Unless curricula in local schools and colleges do not accommodate modern cultural contents, cultural life in cities cannot evolve. Creativity in turn is a precondition for the ability of a society to face future challenges.
In many large Chinese cities old industrial precincts have been refurbished into cultural centres or creative parks. Some have been turned into popular consumption and entertainment spaces, others in high tech parks of creative start-ups. A few have evolved as cradles of creative milieus in city quarters, spreading their creativity into adjacent neighbourhoods. Creative milieus are not tourist and entertainment spaces. They are urban environments where creative people develop cultural, social and economic innovations. They are laboratories of creative action and they add new dimensions to cities. It is economically not productive to reduce the function of creative quarters to the consumption values of local visitors and regional tourists.
8 The negligence of local knowledge and people in urban development
Urban development in China is not an easy policy arena. When planning for urban development cities all over the country are gridlocked in a kind of a Bermuda triangle. Cities have to develop appropriate urban development strategies between promoting economic growth, measured inappropriately by GDP, achieving sustainability as well as improving the quality of life for (all!) citizens working and living in the city. These three policy fields are already extremely complex. In addition local governments have to manoeuvre between top-down government directives (linked to financial support) and local requirements and potentials. During this process local capital is often neglected, or reduced to a few large state-owned industries. The endogenous local potential development, the local knowledge base of local residents is often sacrificed to short term top-down policies. The directive from above, together with the financial basket linked it, cause cities to initiate projects that would otherwise not be considered. Industrial parks are labelled technology parks, or entertainment areas are branded as creative quarters to please the government and get access to central government funding programmes.
Local knowledge is a crucial asset for urban development. Complex push and pull reasons cause millions of young people in China to leave their homes and migrate to large cities. There, they hope to evade poverty, find employment in construction and service industries, and have access to better schools for their children and better health services, also access to leisure and entertainment facilities. In the large cities they wish to participate in the modernization process of the country. In reality, only few migrants can realize their urban dreams. Many migrants would rather prefer to stay in places, where they grew up and enjoyed their life with their families and relatives, if they could make their living and find a job outside agriculture, where they have access to better education and health or other public services. Small and medium sized towns should find more political priority. This can be done by improving public services (education, health, accessibility), by raising productivity in rural economies, by creating work outside the agricultural sector in nearby small and medium sized cities, by encouraging the development of leisure and entertainment facilities. Respective public sector initiatives will encourage developers and private firms to invest in such places. Developers should be persuaded to develop appropriate housing schemes for modern model villages and small towns all over the countries that are integrating living and work. Public incentives may help.
A final comment
Urban development policies in many Chinese cities in the 21st century follow the interests of developers, even though urban land remains in the hand of the state. Transportation planners and smart infrastructure engineers take the lead in forming the city by conceiving the wider functional structure. Clear visions for a more human and less functional urban future do hardly exist, though Chinese urbanists are world champions in painting wonderful blueprints for urban development, reducing the complexity of the city into easily readable symbols and branding cities with poetic rhetoric.
All the above observations do not reflect the many positive achievements that I have seen emerging in China over the years. I like to mention a few of them:
The design quality of architecture in China is amazing, not the architecture that is imported from architectural stars in the West, but the architecture that Chinese architects build all over the country. I am convinced that in the not too distant future Chinese architects will be asked to realize projects in Europe. They will add a new esthetical dimension to modern European architecture.
The fact that Chinese universities and publishers are publishing planning journals on planning in English (City Planning Review) or in two languages (The Journal of Urban Design) is an impressive achievement, though regrettably only few Western planners are aware of such a rich source of information on Chinese planning challenges and achievements. That is why Chinese cities are seen by the international media as heavily polluted environments, as places that have lost their traditional soul and as cities where people are not asked to participate in planning.
Promoted by smart bike-sharing initiatives the recent renaissance of using a bicycle in Chinese cities is impressive. Sooner or later it will lead to a revision of mainstream urban planning approaches, where slow mobility and the provision of public space will get more citizen support, as well as the creation of new urban villages, where citizens can enjoy a new quality of urban life.
In recent years a growing number of planners show an interest in rural villages and small towns as traditional life spaces of Chinese people. This interest will contribute to reconsider accelerated urban development. The interest in the European slow city movement has already encouraged a few counties to initiate similar projects.
More and more Chinese planners are travelling to other countries to learn from achievements and failures and communicate their impressions and experience. Many planning schools in China cooperate with planning schools in Europe, invite staff from Europe and ask them to share their competence with young Chinese students. These young teachers and students will be the next generation of motivated urban planners. They will promote a different approach to urban development, where people matter more than cars. One day the government will ask planners to plan for people and repair the cities that have mushroomed in recent years. I wonder, whether planners in China are already prepared for such a future.
PS: My final thought: I am still exploring what European planners can learn from China to overcome the one-way knowledge transfer in planning. This could well be the aim of an unusual master degree programme at a Chinese university. It would attract curious post graduate or post-doc students from Europe and the US to China, not just from Africa and Asia. Such a programme, however, would certainly require intensive reflections and much comparative research.
I would like to thank WANG Fang for her critical comments on a first draft of this paper.
排版：赵大伟
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