Urban planning as a way to pursue quality-oriented urbanization: Anatomy of the urban planning of Xiong’an New Area, China
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Abstract
ABSTRACT In the mid-2010s, China initiated a quality-oriented urbanization model aimed at overcoming the urban crises resulting from the past quantity-oriented urbanization. The Xiong’an New Area (XNA), China’s latest national-level new area, has been planned such that it serves as a showcase of the quality-oriented urbanization model. Based on a review of the official urban planning documents, this paper examines the characteristics of the XNA’s urban planning and finds that the urban planning has integrated environmental friendliness, social inclusion, innovation-driven economy, cultural inheritance, and smart urban governance to facilitate the XNA’s pursuit of quality-oriented urbanization. Besides analyzing its improvement over the previous urban planning, this paper also examines the XNA’s challenges in its urban planning implementation. Although the XNA is subject to circumstances that make it unique, its urban planning can serve as a point of reference for attempts to urbanize among the world’s other cities. This paper contributes to a more thorough understanding of the role of urban planning in promoting the transformation from quantity-oriented to quality-oriented urbanization models in the Chinese context.