1st Edition
Governance and Planning of Mega-City Regions An International Comparative Perspective
Neoliberalism’s market revolution has had a tremendous effect on contemporary mega-city regions. The negative consequences of market-oriented politics for territorial growth have been recognized. While a lot of attention has been given to how planners and policy makers are fighting back political fragmentation through innovative governance and planning, little has been done to reveal such practices through an international comparative perspective.
Governance and Planning of Mega-City Regions provides a comparative treatment and examination of how new approaches in governance and planning are reshaping mega-city regions around the world. The contributors highlight how European mega-city regions are evolving and how strategic intervention is being redefined to enable the integration of urban qualities in a multi-level governance environment; how traditional federal countries in North America and Australia see the promise of major policies and development initiatives finally moving ahead to herald a more strategic intervention at national and regional scales; and how transitional economies in China witness the rise of state strategies to control the articulation of scales and to reassert the functional importance of state in a growing diffused power context.
This book offers case studies written from a variety of theoretical and political perspectives by world leading scholars. It will appeal to upper level undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, and policymakers interested in urban and regional planning, geography, sociology, public administrations and development studies.
Chapter 1: Governance and Planning of Mega-City Regions: Diverse Processes and Reconstituted State Spaces Jiang Xu and Anthony G.O. Yeh Part I: Multi-Level Governance and Planning in Europe Chapter 2: The Polycentric Metropolis: a Western European Perspective on Mega-City Regions Sir Peter Hall Chapter 3: Innovations in Governance and Planning: Randstad Cooperation Willem Salet Chapter 4: Strategic Planning and Regional Governance in Europe: Recent Trends and Policy Responses Louis Albrechts Part II: Multi-Polity Governance and Planning in Federacy Chapter 5: Novel Spatial Formats: Megaregions and Global Cities Saskia Sassen Chapter 6: America 2050: Towards a Twenty-first Century National Infrastructure Investment Plan for the United States Robert D. Yaro Chapter 7: Mega-City Regional Cooperation in the United States and Western Europe: A Comparative Perspective Linda McCarthy Chapter 8: Regions of Cities: Metropolitan Governance and Planning in Australia John Abbott Chapter 9: The Upper Spencer Gulf Common Purpose Group: A Model of Intra - Regional Cooperation for Economic Development Jim Harvey and Brian Cheers Part III: State-Led Governance and Planning under Transition Chapter 10: Coordinating the Fragmented Mega-City Regions in China: State Reconstruction and Regional Strategic Planning Jiang Xu and Anthony G.O. Yeh Chapter 11: Spatial Planning for Urban Agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta Chaolin Gu, Taofang Yu, Xiaoming Zhang, Chun Wang, Min Zhang, Cheng Zhang and Lu Chen
John Abbott is a practicing metropolitan planner in South East Queensland, Australia. He was previously the Project Coordinator of the SEQ 2001 and SEQ 2021 regional planning projects. He teaches planning theory and metropolitan planning at the University of Queensland. He has analyzed metropolitan planning processes in South East Queensland, Greater Vancouver, and New York using concepts of planning as managing uncertainty.
Louis Albrechts is Professor of Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. His research interests include strategic spatial planning, sustainable development, and regional design, and he has published widely on these issues. He is the founder and co-editor of European Planning Studies, a corresponding member of the German Academy for Research and Planning, and a member of the Advisory Board of the global Research Network on Human Settlements.
Brain Cheers is Research Professor Emeritus of Community Development and former Director of the Center for Rural and Regional Development at the Whyalla Campus of the University of South Australia. He is also Founding Director of the Northern Australia Research Institute and the Center for Social and Welfare Research at James Cook University. He has published four books, and many monographs and papers on rural and regional issues.
Lu Chen is PhD candidate in Economic Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Chaolin Gu is Professor, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University. He has published sixteen books and over 260 articles on urban and regional planning, regional economics, and urban geography in China. He is the principal investigator of a number of projects on China’s urban and regional development and planning. He is Vice President of the Chinese Geographical Association, and serves on editorial boards of many journals and academic councils.
Sir Peter Hall is Bartlett Professor of Planning and Regeneration at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College London. He has received the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for distinction in research, and is an honorary member of the Royal Town Planning Institute, which awarded him its Gold Medal in 2003. He holds fourteen honorary doctorates from universities in the UK, Sweden, and Canada. He received the 2005 Balzan Prize for work on the Social and Cultural History of Cities since the Beginning of the 16th Century. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the European Academy and President of the Town and Country Planning Association. He was knighted in 1998 and in 2003 was named by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as a "Pioneer in the Life of the Nation" at a reception in Buckingham Palace.
Jim Harvey is Adjunct Professor of the Center for Rural Health and Community Development at the University of South Australia. His most recent publications have been on intra-regional cooperation in urban and regional development. He is currently the Australian Manager of an Australian Aid (AusAid) community development project in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua and New Guinea.
Linda McCarthy is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and is also a certified planner. Her research focuses on urban and regional economic development and planning in the United States, Western Europe, and China. Her publications comprise books, book chapters, reports, and articles in peer reviewed journals such as Environment and Planning A, The Professional Geographer, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Land Use Policy.
Willem Salet is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. He is also the President of the Association of European Schools of Planning. His research specializes in spatial planning and metropolitan governance, urban networks, and decision making in strategic urban projects. He coordinated various research projects on behalf of the European Union, national ministries, the National Scientific Foundation, and other stakeholders in the field of urban studies, and has published widely on regional planning and governance.
Saskia Sassen is Robert S.Lynd Professor of Sociology of Department of Sociology and Member of the Committee on Global Thought, at Columbia University. Her most recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2006) and A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007). Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. Her comments have appeared in Guardian, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Newsweek International, and Financial Times, among others. She serves on several editorial boards and is an advisor to several international bodies. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Cities, and chaired the Information Technology and International Cooperation Committee of the Social Science Research Council (USA).
Chun Wang is an urban planner in the Master Planning Department at Beijing Tsinghua Urban Planning and Design Institute.
Jiang Xu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Resource Management, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is a specialist in urban and regional issues, and is currently leading research projects in intercity competition and cooperation, as well as urban and regional governance in China. Dr. Xu has published widely on urban and regional development in leading international journals and is co-author with F. Wu and Anthony G.O. Yeh of Urban Development in Post Reform China: State, Market and Space (Routledge 2007). She was the recipient of the 2008 Research Output Prize of the University of Hong Kong.
Robert Yaro is President of Regional Plan Association, America’s oldest independent metropolitan policy, research, and advocacy group. He is also Professor of Practice in City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught at Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts. He co-chairs the Empire State Transportation Alliance and the Friends of Moynihan Station, and is Vice President of the Forum for Urban Design. He serves on Mayor Bloomberg’s Sustainability Advisory Board, which helped prepare PlaNYC 2030, New York City’s new long-range sustainability plan.
Anthony Yeh is Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also Chair Professor and Head, Department of Urban Planning and Design, and Director, Center of Urban Studies and Urban Planning, University of Hong Kong. His main areas of specialization are in urban development and planning in Hong Kong and China, and the application of GIS in urban and regional planning. At present, he is Secretary-General of the Asian Planning Schools Association and Asia GIS Association. He is on the editorial boards of key international and Chinese journals, and has published over thirty books and monographs, and over 180 academic journal papers and book chapters. He received the 2008 UN-HABITAT Lecture Award for his outstanding and sustained contribution to research, thinking, and practice in the human settlements field.
Taofang Yu is Lecturer, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University. He has published four books and about fifty articles on urban competition and the mega city-region.
Cheng Zhang, is a certified urban planner, and is performing civil service at the Nanjing Urban Planning Bureau. He has published five articles on the mega city-region and the mega-project.
Min Zhang is Associate Professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Nanjing University. She has published about 30 articles on urbanization, the megalopolis, and the global city-region.
Xiaoming Zhang is PhD candidate, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University. He has published about six articles on the mega city-region and spatial regionalization.
Biography
Jiang Xu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Resource Management, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is an urban and regional specialist and co-author of Urban Development in Post Reform China: State, Market and Space (Routledge 2007).
Anthony Yeh, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and Director of the Centre of Urban Studies and Urban Planning of the University of Hong Kong. His main areas of specialization are in urban development and planning in Hong Kong and China, and the applications of GIS in urban and regional planning. He is the recipient of the 2008 UN-HABITAT Lecture Award.
