Governing Resilience Planning: Organizational Structures, Institutional Rules, and Fiscal Incentives in Guangzhou

Meng Meng, Marcin Dąbrowski () and Dominic Stead
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Meng Meng: Department of Urban Planning, Faculty of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China
Marcin Dąbrowski: Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, 2628BL Delft, The Netherlands
Dominic Stead: Department of Built Environment, School of Engineering, Aalto University, 02150 Espoo, Finland

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-18

Abstract: Researchers and policymakers have long called for a collaborative governance process for climate adaptation and flood resilience. However, this is usually challenging when urban planning is supposed to be integrated with water management. Using the Chinese city of Guangzhou as a case study, this study explores the long-term disadvantaged conditions of urban planning in flood governance and how this situation is shaped. The findings show that, in comparison to the increasingly dominant position of water management in flood affairs, the urban planning system has had weak powers, limited legitimate opportunities, and insufficient fiscal incentives from the 2000s to the late 2010s. Those conditions have been shaped by organizational structures, institutional rules, and financial allocation in urban governance, whose changes did not bring benefits to urban planning. The emergence of the Sponge City Program in China in 2017 and its implementation at the municipal level is deemed to be a new start for urban planning, considering the encouragement of nature-based solutions and regulatory tools in land use for flood resilience. Even so, the future of this program is still full of challenges and more efforts are needed.

Keywords: water management; urban planning; flood governance; climate adaptation; urban resilience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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