Digitizing the Dragon Head, Geo-Coding the Urban Landscape: GIS and the Transformation of China's Urban Governance

Abstract

While local governments have been one of the major user groups of GIS, there is still little research on how GIS development in local government might be intertwined with urban governance, particularly in non-Western contexts. Drawing upon insights from GIS implementation, critical GIS, and governmentality studies, this article seeks to bridge this gap by examining the implications of Chinese urban government GIS practices amidst China's changing urban governance. Through an in-depth case study of Shenzhen, this article analyzes how urban GIS has been transformed from a practice involving internal organizational workflow automation, into a more active dimension of the governance of urban spaces-reflected in the expanding practice of "geo-coding" the urban landscape. "Geo-coding" here refers to a broadly defined spatial practice of carving and reconstructing a rational urban space. GIS practices have constituted a particular form of geographic rationality that seeks to govern at a distance while simultaneously regulating the urban environment, intersecting with the broader transformations of China's urban governance. These GIS developments have been largely government-centric rather than citizencentric, yet they provide possibilities for new forms of spatial knowledge production for citizen participation in urban governance. [

Making urban design a public participatory goal: toward evidence-based urbanism

“…The limited number of studies generally involved the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) or Public Participation GIS (PPGIS). Particularly, these have been understood for providing information in a more structured way and with greater transparency of workflow (Lin 2013); however also critiques have been raised such as that the notion that GIS and spatial data usage will guarantee better decision--making process reflects a technocratic planning culture, being GIS developments to date serve more at a level of informing citizens rather than actively engaging them in decision making processes, and public participation in urban planning is still very limited (Laatikainen et al 2015; Bugs 2010). Clearly digital technology is in its infancy with respect to urban governance and design.…”

“…Moreover, citizen participation generates mass quantities of data and information that needs to be captured and analyzed without losing the context (Moore and Elliott 2016). This can involve using digital tools such as GIS to support traditional methods such as charrettes or improve efficiency by geo--coding data (Tanaka et al 2008;Lin 2013). In terms of urban governance, there is an overwhelming need to bridge top--down and bottom--up participation process to address the aspirations for greater citizen engagement in urban governance, planning and design.…”

Local farmland loss and preservation in China—A perspective of quota territorialization

“…On the policy side, to date the use of GIS techniques has been largely government-centric rather than citizen-centric in China (Lin, 2013), thus allowing governments to dominate scientific technologies and impose quota territorialization tactics with minimal local resistance. However, the physical environment is a complicated system and effective environmental management and preservation requires more comprehensive surveys from below.…”

Use of geographic information systems with open source solutions, an approach to access edemocracy & egovernment

“…A basic example of E-Government is shown in [8], where payment of parking tickets is done online using electronic means rather than physical ones. Local governments have been one of the major users of Geographic Information System (GIS) [4]. One of the uses of digital spatial information is the treatment of urban services and the finding of related solutions [12].…”

“…One of the uses of digital spatial information is the treatment of urban services and the finding of related solutions [12]. The transition between digital cities into smart cities needs 3D geospatial framework, including the integration of GIS, Global Position System (GPS) and Remote Sensing [4]. All of this information is provided to the citizens in services like websites or portals that offer mapping geospatial services [10].…”