Abstract
In 2016, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the National Development and Reform Commission announced the third group of eco-cities and low-carbon cities, making the number of listed cities 114 and 81 respectively. These two leading sustainable urban schemes were launched in 2003 and 2010, as China’s responses to national environmental pressures and rising sustainable urbanism in the international arena. They signified an obvious shift in China’s urbanization and environmental agenda. Researchers have deliberated on the transition from industrialization-oriented to real-estate-oriented urbanization, characterized by land financing in Chinese cities. However, a transition towards urban sustainability occurred simultaneously, which has been inadequately examined so far.To bridge this research gap, this study introduces sustainability transition theory to research in empirical cases. It explains the transitional dynamics and pathways of sustainable new town experiments, illuminating the factors and interaction mechanisms of inter-scalar players in the transition management of eco- and low-carbon new towns. This study conducts a comprehensive content analysis of the master plans of 12 new towns, summarizing the normative transition targets of sustainable urban experiments. It explores how they differ from each other and how they influence transition dynamics in practice. It then investigates four eco-/low-carbon new towns that are representative of current major approaches to sustainability transition management in China. The study not only explains the normative and directive ends of sustainable transition for three categories of eco-/low-carbon new towns, but also develops a detailed generic depiction of transition management in practice. It explains the reasons for the different transitional trajectories of each type of sustainable urban experiment.
This study makes significant contributions to both theories of sustainability transition and empirical sustainable urbanization in China. First, it remedies the missing spatial scale in the Multi-level Perspective analytical framework by supplementing it with city-level evidence. By doing so, it elucidates accurately where transition occurs at the sub-national level; how it evolves; and how the city-level transition mediates the national one. It also serves as an overarching theoretical framework that comprehensively incorporates all urban sustainability experiments in China. By thorough examination of inter-scalar dynamics, institutional arrangements, and techno-social innovations in sustainable urban experiments, it links generalized transition rules and particular contexts to give a full picture of the failures, backlashes, dilemmas, deadlocks, and territorial problems of eco-and low-carbon new towns. In the end, a tentative taxonomy of transition pathways of sustainable new towns is proposed based on empirical case studies.
| Date of Award | 27 Aug 2018 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
|
| Supervisor | Xiaoling ZHANG (Supervisor) |