Study On The Formulation Of Comprehensive Planning From The Perspective Of Timeliness

Comprehensive planning is an important link among the statutory planning sequence of a city in China. It takes the role of public policy for the local government to control the development of a city. Generally, during the transition stage of society and economy innovations in China, it is expected to cover the shortage of market system, to effectively allocate public resources, protect physical environment, accommodate interest relationships, safeguard social fairness and keep social stability. However in their formulation practices, comprehensive plans have been encountering more and more embarrassments such as frequent revisions of the content, unstable boundaries of planning indices and implementation difficulties of planning objectives, which leads to challenges on its statutory status and its effectiveness of controlling cities’ development, and results in continuous damages on its reputation about authority and seriousness.Recently, among researchers and practitioners in the Chinese urban plan field, many theoretic researches and performance experiments were conducted, trying to answer the question "where will the comprehensive planning go", which re-strengthened the comprehensive plan on its authority, seriousness and adaptability. As a result from these researches, importance of timeliness of the comprehensive plan has been gradually recognized and is now regarded as a breakthrough to promote the innovation of the formulation system. This thesis takes studying timeliness of urban plans as a starting step, analyzing how it behaves and what are the causes when a comprehensive plan is out of time. It presents some strategies to cope with these problems by transforming formulation mechanism of comprehensive plans, focusing on its formulation philosophy, content, procedures, management, examination and approval and assessment, as well as some support policies.First, historical comprehensive plans of Yangzhou city are reviewed and the detailed exhibitions of out of time are discussed, such as long process for formulation, long period for examining and approving, frequently and arbitrarily revising and weakly supervising the comprehensive planning, covering with two conditions that the comprehensive plan is out of date or invalidated.Secondly, the causes of failing to achieve timeliness are analyzed from the outside and inside environments of the formulation of the comprehensive planning. Causes from the outside environment are uncertainty about the development of the subject city, interference from some powerful individuals and disorder of the work and management systems. Causes from the inside environment include:the formulation philosophy is behindhand, the organization mechanism is inflexible, the content is immense and complicated, the examination and approval procedure is fussy, and the assessment is not in time.Third, the countermeasures about transforming of formulation of the comprehensive plan are presented from the perspective of the timeliness, in the direction of resolving practical problems and taking strengthening the authority, statutory and impartiality of the comprehensive plan as targets. They are:①The formulation philosophy is changed, from results-orientation to process-orientation, and from economy-orientation to policy-orientation.②The organization mechanism is improved to enhance comprehensive cooperations of different departments and achieve public participations from different classes, forming an open and coordinated system involved in multi-stakeholders.③The content is refined, paying attention on structural and statutory parts, intensifying policy research, and improving maneuverability.④The examination and approval system is reconstructed into multi-levels, taken with manifest rights and responsibilities respectively, emphasized on efficiency. ⑤An assessment or feedback system that can give timely comments on a comprehensive plan is founded, encouraging dynamic update of the content. ⑥The statutory procedure for revising a comprehensive plan is improved, focusing on the impartiality. ⑦Supporting policies about law, administration and supervision systems are reformed, ensuring scientificity in decision making.The latest formulation practice of Yangzhou comprehensive plan is discussed at the aspect of the promotion of timeliness. The achievements, deficiency and future work suggested are summarized, which may prove the countermeasures presented in this thesis valid.