Urban networks and governance in city‐region planning: state‐led region building in nanjing city‐region, china

Abstract

During the transition towards a more marketoriented economy and entrepreneurial governance, local authorities have attempted to create new cross-jurisdiction regional entities to enhance their competitiveness through making cityregion plans or regional strategic plans in China. This article analyses the process of region building in China through a case study of Nanjing city-region. We argue that region building is a state-led regional project in China, not a spontaneous process. City-region planning has played a legitimacy-seeking role in the construction of new regions. Based on the discourse provided by the city-region plan, associated city networks are being created as a mechanism for plan implementation and regional coordination. This signals that regional planning is entering the stage of regional institution building. By assessing the capacity of regional institutions, we argue that the newly-emerged regional institutions or urban networks have facilitated regionalization in terms of the increasing involvement of non-state actors, the formation of regional coherence and identity and the enhanced inter-city co-operation. However, it is still difficult to establish effective regional governance due to competing local governments, the arbitrary political leadership and the fragmented planning functions.

City-region integration policies and their incongruous outcomes: The case of Shantou-Chaozhou-Jieyang city-region in east Guangdong Province, China

“…Despite the proliferation of regional development policies in China (Luo et al, 2010;Xu & Yeh, 2011), they are largely not institutionalized (Yeh & Xu, 2008). In a case that might provide insights to that trend this study suggests that the SCJ city-region integration project has not engendered an upscaling of the municipal government or a downscaling of the provincial government towards the city-region scale.…”

“…In recent years, there has been a renaissance of regional policies and planning across China (Li & Wu, 2012Luo, Shen, & Chen, 2010;Wong, Qian, & Zhou, 2008;Xu & Yeh, 2011). Different from past redistributive and allocative regional policies, recent approaches place emphasis on interjurisdictional co-operation and integration (Xu & Yeh, 2013).…”

Spatial structure and influencing factors of regional city supply networks in manufacturing: A case study of Shandong, China

“…One example is the study by Wang et al (2020a), which proposed the optimization of regional transportation planning based on city network research from the perspective of traffic flow but did not discuss the application path specifically. Luo et al (2010) emphasized the importance of the city network perspective on the importance of the institutional building of regional planning in China from the perspective of theoretical analysis.…”

Characterizing functionally integrated regions in the Central Yangtze River Megaregion from a city‐network perspective

“…However, the state-orchestrated tie-up in YRD is based on existing functional connectivity and a long history of regional cooperation and building experiments (Chien & Gordon, 2008;Luo & Shen, 2009;Xu, 2008). Previous studies have shown that several trans-provincial regional alliances have taken places, such as Shanghai-Kunshan (Chien, 2013;Luo & Shen, 2009) and Nanjing-Maanshan (Luo, Shen, & Chen, 2010).…”