Coordination vs. control : planning new cities as new economic engines in China

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, there appears to have been a resurgence of "new cities" that have been master-planned, built, and populated "from scratch" throughout the global South--

particularly in China, where over 600 are currently estimated to be under construction or in conception. Departing from historical precedents--such as the high modernist capitals, socialist industrial towns, or residential new towns of the 20th century--many contemporary planned cities are intended to serve as new economic engines, by which governments seek to "upgrade" their local economic base, shape new industrial clusters, and cherry pick desirable sectors, firms, and workers to attract to their region. In many projects, master-planning practices have thus intensified not just in the domain of urban design, but also in the domain of industrial policy. In addition, weak, low-capacity governments have hired strong, private sector planners who can undertake this planning work on their behalf.

For example, the county of Gu'an transformed from being the poorest to the richest county in Hebei province within a span of 15 years, after a private real estate developer called China Fortune Land Development created a "new industry city" in the service of the local government--in exchange for fifty years of "ownership," shared revenue, and near complete control over its planning. While scholars in critical urban studies, geography, and design have heavily critiqued these new cities as top-down, privatized, commodified, and homogenized products of corporate profit-seeking, there has been little scholarship on the logic of these public-private investments from an economic development perspective. In this thesis, I offer a conceptual framework that describes how new planned cities can theoretically create long-term, positive-sum economic value--not just short-term spoils--

and investigate how private planners might contribute to this value creation. Drawing from interviews with real estate developers in China, as well as the case study of CFLD in Gu'an, I examine both the opportunities and risks posed by the rise of these private planners and these new, deeply intertwined modes of urban and industrial master-planning.