The potential for carbon emissions avoidance through post-consumer recycling has been highlighted in the "Zero-Waste City" initiatives in China, which call for increasing household participation in the community recycling programs. A shift from a facility-oriented strategy to behavior-oriented norm building at the community level provides the local niches for emerging business models in post-consumer recycling. This paper proposes a framework based on the Theory of Planned Behavior to simulate the impact on the participation rate of households in community-based recycling program in the context of different recycling business models in Beijing. Firstly, a questionnaire survey was conducted in 2021 in Beijing (N = 1153) to test the key factors which affect household recycling behavior. Secondly, an agent-based model for community-based recycling which was developed in 2016 has been updated to incorporate the institutional change in the development of zero-waste city initiatives. Scenario analysis is adopted to compare the effects of introducing two new business models to the baseline situation that is prevalent at present. The settings for the two new business models represent the diversified directions of the upgrading of urban recycling sector: one is to improve the intelligence of the collection facilities to save labors, and the other is to involve the informal recyclers to provide door-to-door collection services in person so as to save time for the residents. Additional scenario shows the effects of norm-based solutions in combination with the two strategies addressed above in the long run. The simulation results show that the potential for carbon emissions reduction through post-consumer recycling in Beijing can range from 1 million tons per year at the basic scenario to more than 4.5 million tons per year in the community level norm-based solution scenario. In conclusion, the proposal for sustaining the community-based new business models through the capture of value in the carbon emission reduction is put forward as a guideline for urban recycling infrastructure design.@en

Chinese cities are experiencing rapid urban development while facing severe challenges of environmental pollution. China's central government has proposed several policies to reduce urban waste. However, little is known about the adoption of these policies. Here, we raise the question how can circular policies be classified, and how can this classification be applied to cities in China that wish become zero-waste cities? We develop a framework to classify urban waste policies according to: (a) the “5R” principles (“Rethink”, “Reduce”, “Reuse”, “Recycle”, and “Recover”), (b) four types of waste (industrial, agricultural, municipal, and hazardous) and (c) six types of policy instruments (legal, economic, network, communication, innovation and projects). We use this framework to analyze urban waste policies implemented by sixteen zero-waste demonstration projects in China. The present study emphasizes combinations of policy instruments, “R” strategy and waste type in the implementation of zero-waste policies. We find that the “Rethink”, “Reduce”, and “Recycle” principles have been widely implemented by local authorities in contrast to the principles “Reuse” and “Recover”. Local governments address waste management by embracing regulations, innovation instruments, and project arrangements, while network-based, economic, or communicative policy instruments are used less often. Based on the results we suggest that local governments embrace a comprehensive approach to the use of the “5R” principles and deploy a diverse portfolio of policy instruments.@en

This data article presents a tripartite dataset that formed the empirical basis for a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the use of city labels denoting sustainable urbanism in the scientific literature (Schraven, 2021). The tripartite dataset was generated using the abstract and citation database Scopus (Elsevier). Dataset A lists 148 city labels denoting different approaches to urban planning and development. It was used to select 35 city labels that specifically address sustainable urbanism (‘sustainable city’, ‘smart city’, ‘compact city’ etc.). Dataset B references 11,337 journal and review articles spanning the period 1990–2019. All retrieved articles contain at least one of the 35 city labels in the title, abstract, and author keywords. This database was used to calculate the frequency of the selected city labels across time, and to analyze the co-occurrences of city labels. It was further used to calculate the future trajectory of scientific outputs using the Logistic Growth Model (LGM). Dataset C entails 22,820 author keywords extracted from across the 11,337 articles. This was used to analyze the co-occurrences of keywords with city labels. The data article describes the methods of data collection and curation, the analysis performed, and the potential for reusing the data for further research. The comprehensiveness of the bibliometric corpus – spanning three decades and 35 city labels – lends itself to further investigation of how sustainable urban development has evolved as a topic in the scientific literature since the 1990s. Furthermore, the robust methodology developed could be adapted to other scientific repositories and, indeed, other research problems and questions.

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In response to the mounting environmental problems the circular economy (CE) has become a popular policy concept to achieve sustainable production and consumption goals (SDG12). In line with this China's national government has issued and implemented a series of policies over the last fifteen years, leading to a sudden increase in the volume of CE policies. In the literature this phenomenon is referred to as ‘policy accumulation’, a concept which occurs when governments adopt increasingly more policy than they terminate. In the case of China, the question can be raised how CE policy accumulation has manifested. The present paper analyses policy on national policy spanning 2006–2021 and uses expert interviews to gain more insights in factors driving policy accumulation. Results show that after a stable period with limited growth (2006–2015) government issued increasing numbers of policy over 2016–2021. CE policy goals experienced a shift in focus from improving production efficiency via lowering of consumption patterns, to embracing whole life cycle thinking. CE policy instruments moved from predominantly economic instruments (2006–2015) to regulatory instruments along with accompanying communicative and network instruments (2016–2021), which indicates a move from a market and innovation policy approach to a more centralized model emphasizing hierarchical instruments. Several factors explain for CE policy accumulation: (i) a response to economic growth and environmental degradation; (ii) national government institutions, their interests and agendas; and (iii) policy learning. Implications pertain to future research critically analyzing CE policy accumulation in other contexts or in sub-domains regarding topics referring to SDG12.@en

Sustainable urban transformation has become a mantra for Chinese cities. While most studies focus on sustainable urbanization in megacities, the far larger number of medium-sized cities is understudied, although the latter face more severe urban problems. This article develops a framework for examining policy change in sustainable urban development initiated at the central level and reactions, tensions, and implementation issues emerging at the local level. It focuses on an in-depth case study of the challenges in realizing a transition from quantity-oriented pro-growth policies to sustainable quality-oriented ones in a medium-sized Chinese city. We find that there is evidence of changes in long-term values and goals toward sustainability at the levels of both central and local government, but also great inconsistency between goals on paper and policy implementation in practice. Sustainability in urban development is much harder to realize as local officials see urban development as a major means to maintain local economic growth, which can be separated from other issues in ecological preservation. The article concludes with a roadmap for future studies focusing on medium-sized cities, especially indicating how narratives on sustainable urban development hide from view financial and environmental risks generated by the actual implementation of the dominant aggressive urban pro-growth model.

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Most High-Speed Railway (HSR) station areas in China can be found at the urban periphery or in suburban areas, a phenomenon that has often been criticised. While debate about the influence these location choices have on the economic and sustainable development of cities rages on, little attention has been paid to the decision-making processes leading to these locations. This paper investigates these processes by comparing HSR stations in three cities: Shenzhen, Lanzhou and Jingmen. Our findings can help actors involved in making location choices develop awareness of different interests and create the conditions for successful development of HSR station areas.

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China is often viewed as an emerging experimental base for transit-oriented development (TOD) practices because of its rapid urban growth and development of mass transit networks. The implementation of TOD can be heavily influenced by institutional barriers to urban growth. However, some newly emerging types of TOD practice allow planners and decision-makers to bypass some of the institutional barriers and achieve a certain degree of integrated development. Current academic literature, however, has little to say on how these informal institutional solutions go around these barriers. This article aims to fill this gap by examining three different types of TOD practice as applied in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. We analysed and compared the origins and effects of abovementioned informal institutional arrangements under entrepreneurial governance. We found that land value capturing can replace the existing governance mode in which local government heavily relies on revenue from land-leasing and realise better integration of transit and land development. We conclude with several suggestions for institutional reform based on these new types of TOD experiments.

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City promotion, city marketing and city branding are all frequently mentioned and examined in the literature on urban governance. Based on the goals and characteristics of different city branding strategies, this study identifies a growing level of sophistication from city promotion via city marketing to city branding and proposes that the degree of urban development of cities is positively related to the use of branding strategies. This proposition is tested among 23 Chinese cities: 21 cities in Guangdong province and two in the Special Administrative Regions – Hong Kong and Macao. The results show a positive correlation between the use of city promotion, city marketing and city branding strategies and a city's level of urban development. Only the largest and wealthiest cities, and those with the strongest tertiary sector report on the use of policies which indicate city branding. The strength of the primary sector is significantly and negatively related to all three identified forms of branding strategy. Furthermore, significant positive statistical inter-relationships exist between the different branding strategies, which confirm the existence of complex relations and overlaps between them. Our findings suggest that local governments should align their city branding strategies with their development goals.

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Sustainable transport typically requires a broad spectrum of policy measures, with responsibilities shared by different authorities and with various public values competed with each other, such as commuting, health, spatial quality, and economic development. Designing and implementing integrated policy packages, with consideration for the interdependencies between measures and actors is a promising approach and thus an interesting research topic. A large part of the literature on transport policy looks at separate measures and their effects. These measures in reality always work in constellation with other measures and understanding their dependencies in a way to create synergies through packaging has been the topic of theoretical discussions. However, empirical research on policy packaging is sorely lacking. In this paper, we examine the implementation process of packaging of TM measures from the perspective of actors and their distinct roles and interactions. The data is collected by document analysis and interviews with officers in a Chinese city. Several major problems threatening the implementation of policy packaging are detected, including overlooking implementation at district-level, resource competition between measures, and the absence of integrative supervision. It provides a first answer to the discrepancy occurring in the promise of real-world crafting of well-integrated policies for sustainable mobility.

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The concept of the smart city increasingly being used but is in fact an umbrella topic covering several disciplines and domains. In the current literature is no agreement on a comprehensive vision of the smart city; perspectives on it vary from purely technological urban development to initiatives addressing societal challenges. We argue that in these perspectives, self-governance is often ignored, yet plays an important role in the smart city idea, bringing together people, technologies, and policies. The objective of this chapter is to provide a framework for the classification of self-governance initiatives on a community level. The framework unites heterogeneous urban initiatives giving a broader understanding of existing self-governance practices that could be used within the smart city.@en

Place branding is a growing academic field, and the number of studies about place branding has proliferated in the literature in recent years. However, how the organizational environment around Chinese cities affects city branding strategies is still understudied. This contribution examines how the use of city labels has evolved in the Pearl River Delta since 2000 and explains the changes by three possible propositions: (1) self-reflection based on a city's economic and regional position, (2) vertical inspiration from the national and provincial level governments, and (3) horizontal imitation from fellow municipal governments. It appears that cities in the Pearl River Delta encouraged the tertiary sector and pursued green images in their labelling choices until 2015. Municipalities tended to follow policies formulated by higher level governments and practices of pioneer cities, while since 2015 their strategies have become more self-reflective, mature and consistent. Compared with Western cities, municipal branding is more sensitive to influence from higher level government policies.

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As global cities, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing operate in international economic networks; however, they are also each firmly embedded within a regional context and are surrounded by less populous and less internationally recognized neighbors. Together they form so-called mega-city regions referred to as the Greater Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Bohai Rim, each encompassing a dozen or so cities. In the wake of staggering economic growth and threatening pollution, these cities are compelled to respond to the challenge of ecological modernization (EM): aim for higher economic value added at lower environmental cost. Cities have particular industrial and regional profiles; consequently they follow different developmental pathways. In order to attract coveted investors, green and high-tech corporations, well-endowed residents and talented workforce, these cities engage in city branding practices. In this contribution, a typology of EM developmental pathways is presented and the 41 cities in the three Chinese mega-city regions are analyzed in terms of their respective pathways and city branding practices. We argue that different industrial and regional profiles allow for different developmental pathways making different city branding strategies likely. Most cities brand themselves in comformity with what their pathway would lead us to predict, except cities with a strongly manufacturing oriented profile; the brands of the latter type deviate markedly from their current reality. Cities adopting branding strategies that contrast sharply with their historical legacy and current profile risk promoting themselves in ways that the outside world is likely to perceive as lacking in credibility.@en

This article shows how a deeper understanding of the psychological roots of strategic behavior in the targets approach can provide a fresh perspective for policy makers and public administrators to alter behavior. It presents how the Target Responsibility System (TRS) is deployed in China, identifies what types of strategic behavior emerge in the TRS, and explores what psychological insights can be drawn to explain the emergence of strategic behavior. Semi-structured elite interviews were conducted. The central theoretical takeaway is that in the target setting and implementation processes, the behavior of local officials benefits individuals, not organizations; their psychology is geared to challenges in different stages of the target achievement process; and four cognitive biases can be used to explain the emergence of different types of strategic behavior. The empirical implications are that China’s specifics lie in that the tight relationship between target performance and cadre evaluation/promotion, and the use of numbers to political ranks provide fertile ground for an overall psychology where any error or failure must be avoided.@en

China has gone through a rapid process of urbanization, but this has come along with serious environmental problems. Therefore, it has started to develop various eco-cities, low-carbon cities, and other types of sustainable cities. The massive launch of these sustainable initiatives, as well as the higher cost of these projects, requires the Chinese government to invest large sums of money. What financial toolkits can be employed to fund this construction has become a critical issue. Against this backdrop, the authors have selected Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city (SSTEC) and Shenzhen International Low-Carbon City (ILCC) and compared how they finance their construction. Both are thus far considered to be successful cases. The results show that the two cases differ from each other in two key aspects. First, ILCC has developed a model with less financial and other supports from the Chinese central government and foreign governments than SSTEC, and, hence, may be more valuable as a source of inspiration for other similar projects for which political support at the national level is not always available. Second, by issuing bonds in the international capital market, SSTEC singles itself out among various sustainable initiatives in China, while planning the village area as a whole and the metro plus property model are distinct practices in ILCC. In the end, the authors present a generic financing model that considers not only economic returns but also social and environmental impacts to facilitate future initiatives to finance in more structural ways.

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Promoting the rise of Central China is one of the most important national strategies regarding the promotion of China's economic development. However, the environmental issues in the central regions have become remarkably severe. It is therefore worthwhile exploring how economic development and environmental protection can be coordinated. Focusing on the 29 prefecture-level cities in the Central Plains Urban Agglomeration, the authors empirically analyze the relationship between the economy and the environment from 2004 to 2014. The combined methods of the spatial autocorrelation model, the environmental Kuznets curve, and the global spatial correlation test are systematically employed. The results show that: (1) a strong spatial correlation exists between industrial wastewater discharge, industrial sulfur dioxide, and dust emissions in the Central Plains Urban Agglomeration; (2) the relationship between the economy and the environment of this urban agglomeration reveals an inverted "U" curve, which confirms the classical environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Industrial dust emissions have surpassed the inflection point of the Kuznets curve, but its spatial spillover effect still remains strong. This is caused by an accumulation effect and a lag effect; (3) the proportion of the secondary industry and population has a strong positive effect on pollution discharge; investments in science and technology have a certain inhibitory effect on industrial sulfur dioxide emission. Moreover, an increase in the number of industrial enterprises has a negative effect on industrial wastewater emission. At the end, the authors put forward policy recommendations regarding the establishment of a joint supervisory department and unified environmental standards at the regional level to deal with the spillover effects of pollution.

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Effective transport infrastructure planning requires ample knowledge of the impacts of road infrastructure provision on manufacturing locations. This study seeks to disentangle the dynamic causal relationship between road infrastructure and manufacturing agglomeration in Northeast China from 2000 to 2010 under the framework of a panel data vector auto-regression (PVAR) model. The results indicate that lane-mile additions of intra-provincial road infrastructure may increase the industrial concentration in the central municipalities of the northeastern region, and this effect will grow stronger over the years. Our results also confirm the ambiguous effects of improvements in inter-provincial road facilities on manufacturing agglomeration. Moreover, road infrastructure construction, both intra- and inter provincial roads, was clearly not influenced by the location of prior manufacturing firms. Important policy implications appear from our findings for further decision making on road infrastructure expanding or planning in Northeast China, and other less developed regions worldwide with a similar economic and political environment.@en

Recently we have witnessed the worldwide adoption of many different types of innovative technologies, such as crowdsourcing, ridesharing, open and big data, aiming at delivering public services more efficiently and effectively. Among them, ridesharing has received substantial attention from decision-makers around the world. Because of the multitude of currently understood or potentially unknown risks associated with ridesharing (unemployment, insurance, information privacy, and environmental risk), governments in different countries apply different strategies to address such risks. Some governments prohibit the adoption of ridesharing altogether, while other governments promote it. In this article, we address the question of how risks involved in ridesharing are governed over time. We present an in-depth single case study on Singapore and examine how the Singaporean government has addressed risks in ridesharing over time. The Singaporean government has a strong ambition to become an innovation hub, and many innovative technologies have been adopted and promoted to that end. At the same time, decision-makers in Singapore are reputed for their proactive style of social governance. The example of Singapore can be regarded as a revelatory case study, helping us further to explore governance practices in other countries.

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City branding is not only increasingly practiced in cities in established economies, but also among municipal governments in countries, until quite recently, rather closed off from the outside world. One country with a strong drive to engage in urban (re)development in the post-oil era through enhancing its ‘ecological modernization’ is Iran. Megacities in Iran have all begun to venture into making profiles of what they think they are or would like to be. However, some of the adopted city branding strategies lack sophistication. In this article, the authors examine what indicators can be used for evaluating the credibility of city brands and apply these to Iran’s 15 megacities. After offering brief descriptions of the generic features of each of these cities, they map their use of city brand identities and popular city labels related to ecological modernization and analyze the credibility of their city branding practices. Based on their findings, the authors distinguish five types of cities and explain what makes some types more credible in their use of brands than others. Generally speaking, compared to cities in other nations, Iranian cities pay special attention to historical, natural, cultural, and religious aspects.@en

Against the background of globalization, city branding has become a useful strategy utilized by decision-makers in cities to promote their cities in the race for limited resources. Urban transformation factors, i.e., economic development stage and geographic position play an important role in city branding choices. We argue that city branding choices of a city can be affected by other cities through city interactions and networking. The effects of city interactions can spread across cities either through spatial proximity-referring physical or geographic connections, or logical proximity-representing city interconnectivity caused by collaboration activities. To test our argument, we develop a two-layer network model using the generalized modeling framework (GEMF) to model city branding choices, based on empirical data of sustainable brand developmental pathways from the three economic regions in China. We examine the general evolution pattern of city branding practices and construct different scenarios to analyze the impact of city interactions. The results indicate that taking city interactions as an additional factor to urban transformation allows for a better prediction on city branding choices. Policy-makers and urban planners need to consider infrastructure and economic development policies in designing city branding strategies.

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To promote sustainable urbanization and combat the economic, environmental, energy and safety issues that go with rapid motorization, the Ministry of Transport in China has introduced the “Transit Metropolis” program with a substantive amount of funds devoted to the implementation of the program in local governments. This represents the largest ever central government-led effort addressing transit metropolis development in the world. How has the program been implemented locally? Have the selected demonstration cities followed the same principle or taken comparable measures to implement their version of the transit metropolis? What is their performance? These questions remain unknown in the current literature. This article answers the above questions through a literature review, interviews and comparative case studies in Shenyang and Dalian, two large cities in Liaoning Province. It shows that both cities have successfully achieved the target levels for building a transit metropolis. Similarities between the two cities can be found their absence of any policies on automobile restriction and the presence of enormous efforts in transit network expansion and optimization. Differences lie in the fact that Shenyang has been more conventional in developing the transit metropolis, while Dalian has been more innovative and flexible in policy implementation. When comparing our empirical findings with the experience of creating transit metropolis elsewhere in China and in foreign countries, we find that policies and regulations restricting car use and calming traffic are not necessary conditions for successful transit metropolises; however, the attractiveness of transit infrastructure, combined with aesthetic and well-decorated street network is essential for a modal shift for transit. We also find that the perception on the transit metropolis in China more emphasizes transit service improvement, while the concept in Western countries more focuses on the shift of land use patterns that lean more towards influencing transit behavior. @en