Ecological City Design and Planning: How China Expands Urban Ecology, Institutional Learning, and Cultural Shifts through the Evolving Eco-Developments

Abstract

As the concept of sustainability has become a global norm, industrialized and industrializing countries have sought to innovate their strategies for urbanization and modernization in order to set standards for sustainable development. In China, a pro-environmental movement has emerged with continued experimentation of eco-environmental approaches to urbanization. Through the lens of a series of high-profile eco-developments initiated by the Chinese state, this dissertation examines the transnational influences of eco-environmental ideas on urbanization policy and practice, as well as the meanings and impacts of experimental projects that demonstrate eco-environmental principles. These projects were conceived as replicable paradigms for urbanization and concomitant modernization based on the idea of growing the city in harmony with nature. The selected cases include four nationally promoted model eco-cities and two award-winning, locally initiated developments—Zhengdong New District and Nanhu Eco-City. A deep dive into the vicissitudes of the selected eco-developments reveals their limited eco-environmental effects and social influences constrained by the scale of these privileged developmental jurisdictions. Genuine eco-environmental considerations were undermined by growth-oriented developmental agendas of entrepreneurial local states. Eco-environmental rationality was adopted within an authoritarian regime to reinforce state legitimacy. Reflecting on these limitations, this study points to accelerant factors for pro-environmental sociopolitical transitions. The assessment and comparison of the examined eco-developments illuminates how ecological design and planning has stimulated eco-environmental ethics in local practices, which have pushed the boundaries of China’s conventional approaches to urbanization. Various ecological perspectives embodied in China’s eco-developments—whether scientific, technological, aesthetic, or philosophical—have made these projects stand out as demonstrations of a greener path to urbanization. Despite the limited achievements in these experimental projects, eco-developments are meaningful experiments that have stimulated institutional learning about eco-environmental values. Facilitated by the dissemination of ideas in China’s political and professional networks, China’s evolving eco-developments have created an ecological image of the nation’s modernity, manifested by new landscapes, new infrastructure, new rhetoric, and new social life. These projects not only reshape the built environment but also influence culture, politics, and society.