A Study Of New Concept Regional Planning Based On New Regionalism In China

With the backdrop of increasingly deepening of the process of economic globalization, it has become more obvious that region has been regarded as an economic, cultural and political organization. And also, with the rising role of the regional space and rapid development of local organizations as well as nongovernmental power, it is a prevailing trend to transform the mode of regional planning around the world. In this, new regionalism has been playing a leading role in changes of regional planning. In this regard in recent years, in order to promote integration of the regional space, political agility and institutional innovation. By its great influence, regional planning has now a new goal in seeking effectiveness and balance of the conflicted interest parties, which has advocated collaborative activities of the players, balance of top-down vis-a-vis down-top management mechanism and participation of the multibodies in maket economies. Consequently, it is entirely different from traditional mode which stressed control and order measures in distributing resources mainly through top-down administrative intervention.Associated with this, change of the mode of regional planning has recently been one of significant focus within both academic and governmental circles in China, including increasing function of the market and regional space, and diversity in regional development as well. However, there have been a lot of debates and conflicts on this, e.g. about the essence, notion, nature, key points and so on. In this , overall, the reason has been that there is lack of a correlative theory for renovation of implement mechanism of regional planning.In order to fully implement the national strategy of scientific development and strengthen macrocontrol capabilities of regional development, how to formulate new concept based regional planning has become a major agenda in China, as to meet with significant challenges of the overall environmental changes. In other words, apparently, regional planning has been recalled and much accountedable is not simply resume old work as previously. It should change the mode to meet with requirement of the national strategy of scientific development stressing, market-ecomomic mechanism, participation in ecomomic globalization process and national strategic target. Consequently and obviously, it is absolately necessary to discuss its theoretical base in depth.Accordingly, the purpose of this thesis is, using methodologies based mainly on new regionalism, to explore a new concept based regional planning in China. It probes into the path of change of the mode and mechanism of regional planning with attempts to construct an essential framework of new concept based regional planning in China in general, and to analyse regional planning practice in the Yangtze Delta Area in particular.Structurely, mainly this thesis consists of five majorparts: 1) the first part including three chapters(chapter one, two and three) , discusses its theoretical foundation through analysing and summarizing its context, viewpoints, basic concepts, functions of regional planning and evolvement of the regional planning theory; 2) the second part containing two chapters(chapter four and five), firstly synthetically approaches the new regionalism paradigm including development stages, keystones, theoretical predominance and its limitation, and secondly probes into the practice of regional planning in China with its main problems and challenges. Meanwhile, based on analyse of foreign experience of the west economies in practice of regional planning, it emphasizes the actual importance of transformation of regional planning in China, and puts forward the goal, thought, implement mechanisms ; 3 )the third part including chapter six, with the new regionalism angle of view, mainly expatiates and formulates the framework of new concept based regional planning with focus on its contents, functions, the explicit notion, and key implement mechanisms; 4) the fourth part, concerning with chapter senen, is a case study of practice in the Yangtze Delta Area using new concept based regional planning theory discussed above. It shows that, although in some respects the Yangtze Delta Area has already gone forward with some kind of new regionalism ideas, it aims at the poor effectivenees of intergovernmental collaboration in implementing regional planning. It analyses the general development of regional economy, society and intergovernmental collaboration. Then, it demonstrates that it is imminent to implement new concept based regional planning and brings forward its goal attainment, features and implementing mechanisms. 5) the fifth part of chapter eight concludes key points of this thesis and topics that may be beneficial to further deepen the research.Based on the above discussion, this thesis argues that new regionalism has synthesized the oveall governance, new institutional and network organization theories. Its core idea includes the active role of regional space, multilevel governance in policy-making, coordinative mechanisms of the players that are not only beneficial to understanding of the overall framework of regional planning, but also the path of transformation and goal of regional planning in China at present. Based on this, it argues that with important function of new concept based regional planning in China, it will lead to advancement of macrocontrol capabilities of regional development, sustainable development of regional space and, particularly, the course of regional integration in the end, new concept based regional planning maintains three fundamental elements, concerning with the mode of scientific development, main functional areas and spatial governance, with its basic notion embodied in morden ideas of region, policy, coordination, environment and ethic thinking and also multiplicity of mechanisms for its implementation, including linkage, network and organizational mechanisms.In sum, this thesis uses perspectives of new regionalism in analyzing transformation of the original regional planning framework previously practiced in China and constructs a new and essential framework of new concept based regional planning. It is expected that this may enrich the relative study in this area.