Planning New Cities As New Economic Engines in China
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Coordination vs. Control: Planning New Cities as New Economic Engines in China by Heeyoung Angie Jo A.B. in History of Art and Architecture Harvard University Cambridge, MA (2016) Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in City Planning at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY June 2019 © 2019 Heeyoung Angie Jo. All Rights Reserved The author hereby grants to MIT the permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of the thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Author_________________________________________________________________ Department of Urban Studies and Planning May 22, 2019 Certified by _____________________________________________________________ Associate Professor Siqi Zheng Department of Urban Studies and Planning Thesis Supervisor Accepted by______________________________________________________________ Professor of the Practice, Ceasar McDowell Co-Chair, MCP Committee Department of Urban Studies and Planning Coordination vs. Control: Planning New Cities as New Economic Engines in China by Heeyoung Angie Jo Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning on May 22, 2019 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in City Planning ABSTRACT Over the past twenty years, there appears to have been a resurgence of “new cities” that have been master-planned, built, and populated “from scratch” throughout the global South— particularly in China, where over 600 are currently estimated to be under construction or in conception. Departing from historical precedents—such as the high modernist capitals, socialist industrial towns, or residential new towns of the 20th century—many contemporary planned cities are intended to serve as new economic engines, by which governments seek to “upgrade” their local economic base, shape new industrial clusters, and cherry pick desirable sectors, firms, and workers to attract to their region. In many projects, master-planning practices have thus intensified not just in the domain of urban design, but also in the domain of industrial policy. In addition, weak, low-capacity governments have hired strong, private sector planners who can undertake this planning work on their behalf. For example, the county of Gu’an transformed from being the poorest to the richest county in Hebei province within a span of 15 years, after a private real estate developer called China Fortune Land Development created a “new industry city” in the service of the local government—in exchange for fifty years of “ownership,” shared revenue, and near complete control over its planning. While scholars in critical urban studies, geography, and design have heavily critiqued these new cities as top-down, privatized, commodified, and homogenized products of corporate profit-seeking, there has been little scholarship on the logic of these public-private investments from an economic development perspective. In this thesis, I offer a conceptual framework that describes how new planned cities can theoretically create long-term, positive-sum economic value—not just short-term spoils— and investigate how private planners might contribute to this value creation. Drawing from interviews with real estate developers in China, as well as the case study of CFLD in Gu’an, I examine both the opportunities and risks posed by the rise of these private planners and these new, deeply intertwined modes of urban and industrial master-planning. Thesis Supervisor: Siqi Zheng Title: Associate Professor of Real Estate Development and Entrepreneurship Acknowledgements My biggest thanks to Siqi Zheng—whose clarity, integrity, sharpness, good judgement, work ethic, warmth, and bubbling enthusiasm for scholarship are unmatched!—for introducing me to the world of Chinese city-making, and for the incredible journey through it over the past two years. I am so blessed to have gotten the chance to work with and learn from you. A big thank you to Brent Ryan for his insightful comments as my thesis reader, as well as to Bish Sanyal and Yonah Freemark for their early enthusiasm and advice on turning my proposal into a project. Much thanks also to Jason Jackson, Amy Glasmeier, Gabriella Carolini, and Balakrishnan Rajagopal for being incredibly stimulating teachers, whose influence obviously permeates throughout this thesis despite what it is about on the surface. I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked and travelled with the members of the MIT China Future City Lab—especially Zhengzhen Tan, Haijing Liu, Colleen Qiu Xi, Rui Du, Yingcheng Li, and Jamie Wong—and for the many ways they have all helped push this research forward. I am forever grateful for the enormous generosity of the many scholars, industry contacts, and friends of the lab whom I met throughout my time in China. I would also like to give special thanks to my parents, Youngjoon Jo and Taehee Kwon, whose interest in new cities in Korea originally brought me to this subject. Their efforts to help me understand multiple contexts, visit many places, and talk to all kinds of people will always be at the root of anything good I might do with my work. Last, all my love to my friends at DUSP, my lovely Housemates, and my dear Aaron Tucker, whose care, curiosity, support, intellect, and good opinion I treasure more and more. 3 Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 5 A New Generation of New Cities ............................................................................................... 5 Old Wine in New Bottles? ........................................................................................................ 12 New Wine ................................................................................................................................. 15 Empirical Base and Case Study ................................................................................................ 21 Gaps in Current Approaches ..................................................................................................... 25 Thesis Outline ........................................................................................................................... 30 Background ................................................................................................................................. 32 A Visit to Gu’an New Industry City, Hebei Province, China ................................................... 32 Critical Debates in Current Literature ....................................................................................... 48 Top-Down Planning .............................................................................................................. 50 Privatization .......................................................................................................................... 52 Commodification .................................................................................................................. 55 Homogenization .................................................................................................................... 59 History and Theory: From Control to Coordination ............................................................. 64 In History: The Key Role of Control ....................................................................................... 64 In Theory: The Key Role of Coordination ............................................................................... 74 Convergence ............................................................................................................................. 83 In Reality: Who Fills this Role? ............................................................................................... 85 Conceptual Framework and Planning ...................................................................................... 89 Conceptual Framework ............................................................................................................. 90 Market Logic ............................................................................................................................. 91 Where? Location Choice ...................................................................................................... 92 What? Industry Choice ........................................................................................................ 95 When? Timing Choice ....................................................................................................... 101 Coordination Mechanisms (How?) ......................................................................................... 105 Synthesis ................................................................................................................................. 110 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 114 New Opportunities and Risks ................................................................................................. 114 Closing Thoughts .................................................................................................................... 129 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 135 4 Coordination