Chinese Collaborative Planning in the Digital Era Institutions, Power Relations, and Public Spheres

List of Figures and Tables

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Yanliu Lin and Hongmei Lu

PART 1: THINKING DIFFERENTLY FOR COLLABORATIVE PLANNING IN CHINA

Chapter 1: Institutional Changes and the Deliberative Turn for Complexity

Yanliu Lin

Chapter 2: Social Media and Public Spheres in China

Hongmei Lu and Yanliu Lin

Chapter 3: Reflecting on Collaborative Planning Theory under Digital Transition: Beyond Communicative and Agonistic Approaches

Yanliu Lin

Chapter 4: Conceptualizing Chinese Collaborative Planning in the Digital Era: Institution Design, Power Relations, and Public Spheres

Yanliu Lin

PART 2: COLLABORATIVE PLANNING PRACTICES

Chapter 5: A Comparison of Institutional Design of Collaborative Governance in China

Xiaomeng Zhou

Chapter 6: Gaining Discursive Power through Framing: Citizens’ Strategic Use of Social Media in Collaborative Planning

Junyao He 

Chapter 7: The Influence of Digital Technologies on Power Exercises in Collaborative Practices: A Case of Built Heritage in China

Zhen Li 

Chapter 8: Governance Models of Community Gardens in Urban China: Motivations, Opportunities, and Challenges

Danning Lu and Hongmei Lu 

Chapter 9: Community Participation in Environmental Governance in Guangzhou

Xinhu Liu, Weijue Guo, and Zheng Liu

Chapter 10: From Government-led Participation to Shared Governance: A Situational Collaborative Mechanism for Urban Flood Risk Management in Shenzhen

Zeqiang Pan

Conclusion: Future Research on Collaborative Planning

Yanliu Lin and Hongmei Lu

Index

Biography

Yanliu Lin is an associate professor of Spatial Planning and Digitalization in the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on collaborative planning, digital planning, and planning support science for sustainable urban futures. She examines how digital technologies (e.g., planning support systems, social media, artificial intelligence, and digital twins) interact with urban governance and planning processes across diverse institutional and local contexts. She is the principal investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project on collaborative planning in China (CoChina). She has served as a lead guest editor for two special issues: Digital Planning for Sustainable Urban Future in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, and Collaborative Planning in the Digital Era in Planning Practice & Research. She has also co-edited two books: Smart Governance and New Forms of Collaborative Planning (The Commercial Press, 2022) and Village in the City: Asian Variations of Urbanisms of Inclusion (Park Books, 2014).

Hongmei Lu is currently a researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She holds a PhD in Environmental Policy from Michigan Technological University, and her dissertation was nominated for the 2021 CGS/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her research focuses on digitally enabled environmental policy and planning, as well as collaborative governance, with a thematic emphasis on nature-based sustainability. She contributes to the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project on collaborative planning in China (CoChina), where she studies digital participation in shaping public spheres and collaborative governance. In addition to her academic work, she is also active in community-engaged research. Her research examines the practice of nature-based solutions through a comparative lens, including cases such as the implementation of green roof policies in metropolitan Shanghai, China’s Sponge City program, local food systems in Michigan, and urban green spaces in the Netherlands.

"Funded by the European Research Council (ERC) project, Yanliu Lin and her team are pioneers in capturing an emerging trend towards more collaborative planning in China. In urban regeneration, heritage protection, and environmental governance, their rigorous and grounded observations are profound. Together, they generate important insights into the nature of governance in China and related changes in institutions and power relations. This is an important and insightful book on planning, geography, and China’s development."

Fulong Wu, Bartlett Professor of Planning, University College London (UCL), United Kingdom

"The book offers a highly interesting compendium of contributions on the practice of collaborative planning in China. It critically examines this practice from three perspectives: institutions, power relations, and the public sphere. What makes this compendium particularly valuable is that, although the theory of collaborative planning originates in a democratic institutional context (Western planning practice), its application within China's authoritarian institutional environment offers valuable opportunities to challenge, adapt, and reconceptualize its universal claims, thus contributing to the reconceptualization of collaborative planning theory."

Stan Geertman, emeritus Professor of Planning Support Science, Utrecht University, The Netherlands