China's Comprehensive Planning Practice, its Evolution, and Prospects

This paper describes the evolution of Chinese comprehensive planning and proposes a number of recommendations related to the country's economic development and political reform, based on analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the current approaches to comprehensive planning.

Chinese urban planning has a long history. Its origin can be traced back to 5,000 years ago. The urban planning approaches advanced along with the development of Chinese cities. During the long history, Chinese people formulated a unique way of urban planning.

The different urban planning approaches have specifically identifiable features in different historic periods. Particularly, with the establishment of the socialist regime in China in 1949, complete and systematic urban planning approaches were created.

Today, when the country is proceeding with economic and political reforms, the reform of comprehensive planning approaches has also been undertaken in a significant way. The author poses a number of viewpoints for the potential transformation of the approaches in China, with particular emphasis on the change of planning mechanism (including planning process and implementation) and citizen participation.