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A Discursive Project of Low-Carbon City in Shenzhen, China

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A Discursive Project of Low-Carbon City in Shenzhen, China Anti-Carbonism or Carbon Exceptionalism: A Discursive Project of Low-Carbon City in Shenzhen, China Yunjing Li Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2019 2019 Yunjing Li All rights reserved ABSTRACT Anti-Carbonism or Carbon Exceptionalism: A Discursive Project of Low-Carbon City in Shenzhen, China Yunjing Li As the role of cities in addressing climate change has been increasingly recognized over the past two decades, the idea of a low-carbon city becomes a dominant framework to organize urban governance and envision a sustainable urban future. It also becomes a development discourse in the less developed world to guide the ongoing urbanization process. China’s efforts toward building low-carbon cities have been inspiring at first and then obscured by the halt or total failure of famous mega-projects, leading to a conclusion that Chinese low-carbon cities compose merely a strategy of green branding for promoting local economy. This conclusion, however, largely neglects the profound implications of the decarbonization discourse for the dynamics between the central and local governments, which together determine the rules and resources for development practices. The conclusion also hinders the progressive potentials of the decarbonization discourse in terms of introducing new values and norms to urban governance. This dissertation approaches “low-carbon cities” as a part of the decarbonization discourse and employs a discourse-institutional analysis to investigate the relationships between discourse, institutional arrangement, and socio-political resources for development activities. Through an examination of the Shenzhen International Low-Carbon City (SILCC), the dissertation answers three questions: (1) How does the framework of a low-carbon city affect a specific urban development project? (2) What is the role of the state (local/national) in promoting low-carbon development? and (3) What is the influence of the decarbonization discourse on institutions and norms of urban governance? Evidence was gathered during 2014-2017 from three fieldtrips, 39 interviews and the review of government documents and other archives. The dissertation highlights how different levels of government became entangled in developing a local area and how, in doing so, the proponents continuously searched for ways of ‘positioning’ their initiative in discourses that would attract higher level government support, maintain local coalitions, and entice international attention and investment. In this regard, low-carbon cities are a state discursive project. Rather than an established material goal, a low-carbon city is an evolving process in which the decarbonization discourse introduces a new set of values, metrics and governing logics into development practices and redefines the legitimacy and accountability of urban development. Furthermore, the local state leverages the interpretive flexibility within the decarbonization discourse through strategies including carbon labeling, weak carbonization, and carbon exceptionalism. Consequently, the state takes a strategic position to reconfigure the state-society as well as the environment-economy relationships. Table of Contents List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. ii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iii List of Acronyms …………………………………………………………………………….…..iv Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Three Major Drivers of Chinese Low-Carbon Cities .....................................................9 Chapter 2: Research Questions, Research Design and Analytical Framework .............................51 Chapter 3: Environmental Discourse, Environmental State and Low-Carbon Urbanism .............79 Chapter 4: Pre-‘carbon’ Development of Pingdi and Predecessor of SILCC ..............................126 Chapter 5: Post-‘carbon’ Development Trajectory of SILCC .....................................................154 Chapter 6: Strategic Alliance—Mobilization under the Low-Carbon Agenda ...........................212 Chapter 7: Strategic Selectivity—From an Environmental Discourse to an Economic Discourse ………………………..................................................................................................................253 Chapter 8: Conclusions ................................................................................................................285 References ....................................................................................................................................307 Appendix A: List of Interviewees ................................................................................................328 Appendix B: Interview Questionnaire .........................................................................................331 i List of Tables Table 1.1: National city-based carbon reduction programs ……………………………………..26 Table 2.1: Key planning documents of the SILCC ……………………………………………...60 Table 2.2: Leading projects in the Pilot Zone …………………………………………………...61 Table 4.1: Shenzhen municipality construction land by district, 2006-2020 ………………….129 Table 4.2: The hierarchy of plans in Shenzhen urban planning system ……………………….133 Table 4.3: Economic performance of Pingdi, Xinxu, and Qingxi, 2009……………………….139 Table 5.1: Land ownership of the Pilot Zone ………………………………………………….164 Table 5.2: SSEZCDC-sponsored kick-off projects in the Pilot Zone …………………….…....170 Table 5.3: SILCC industry admittance ………………………………………………….……..179 Table 5.4: Present and planned land uses in the Pilot Zone ……………………………….…...189 Table 5.5: Themes of the SILCC Forum, 2013-2017 ……………………………………..…...190 Table 5.6: Organization of the SILCC Forum, 2013-2017 ………………………………..…...193 Table 5.7: Pilot Zone development size and scale of building retrofit …………………….…..198 ii List of Figures Figure 1.1: Chinese statutory urban planning system..………………………………………43 Figure 2.1: Location of the SILCC..………………………………………………………… 59 Figure 2.2: Pilot Zone, Extension Zone and the whole area of the SILCC .…………………61 Figure 2.3: Analytical framework of the study …………………………………………….. 71 Figure 4.1: The Shenzhen Municipality, old SSEZ, and urban districts …………………...127 Figure 4.2: Real Estate Development in Longgang District, 1998-2013 …………………..131 Figure 4.3: Longgang Central Cluster District Plan (2005-2020) ………………………… 135 Figure 4.4: The regulatory plans in effect in Pingdi ………………………………………. 136 Figure 4.5: Formation of Ping-Xin-Qing tripartite cooperation …………………………... 139 Figure 4.6: Location of Ping-Xin-Qing Regional Cooperation Demonstration Area.…….. 141 Figure 5.1: The SILCC Convention and Exhibition Center ………………………………. 165 Figure 5.2: The organizational structure for the SILCC ………………………………….. 166 Figure 5.3: Land leased by Longgang to private developers between 2010-2012 in Gaoqiao area .…………………………………………………………………………................177 Figure 5.4: Amendments with floor-area-ratio to the statutory plan of Gaoqiao area ……..190 Figure 5.5: Pilot Zone three-step development plan ……………………………………….197 Figure 5.6: Economic performance in Pingdi (SILCC), 2007-2016 ……………………….206 iii iv v vi Acknowledgements I owe debts of gratitude to many people who made my PhD life a fruitful experience. I would like to start by thanking my committee. My advisor, Elliott Sclar, ignited my intellectual curiosity back when he advised my Master’s thesis on Chinese land banking policy. I could not have begun a doctoral research without his support and encouragement. His passion for making progressive changes and sense of humor when this happens uneasily has inspired me to balance an idealist and a pragmatic mindset when doing research. Robert Beauregard has read and improved every sentence of this dissertation and assisted my transformation from a doctoral student to an independent researcher. Our conversations have impacted my thinking well beyond the dissertation. Jian Liu has been a mentor for academic and non-academic life since my college times. The case study in the dissertation would have been impossible without her kind offer to introduce me to the people on the ground. For me, she is a role model for being a scholar, a mom, and a workingwoman. Weiping Wu’s commitment to culturally sensitive research helped me to focus on China’s context and Atul Pokharel’s institutional thinking helped me to improve the analytical method in the dissertation. I also give many thanks to Xin Li for her advice on choosing my research topic at the proposal stage. Several other Columbia members made the doctorate experience memorable. I thank Lance Freeman for helping me improve quantitative research skills and his invitations to collaborate. I give many thanks to Linying He and Bernadette Virginia Baird-Zars for their friendship and vii great conversations. I also thank Xiaohong Pan, Jigar Bhatt, Sophonie Joseph, and Alexis Perrotta, and the cohort with which I began this journey: Lauren Fischer and Danielle Petretta. This dissertation would not have been
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