Development of New Sustainable Urban Areas: Horizontal or Vertical Planning Systems for Resource Efficient Cities

Ronald Wennersten

A chapter in An Overview of Urban and Regional Planning from IntechOpen

Abstract: China's remarkable economic growth has been partly driven by a high rate of urbanization and fast reduction of poverty. This has not been achieved without a price, that of environmental pollution. The Chinese government has made great efforts to reduce coal consumption; however, adjusting the fuel mix in a country like China is not easy. An important question is, if developing countries should follow the Chinese model and reduce poverty based on the Chinese vertical planning system with a strong one-party government? or should the developing countries use a horizontal model based more on local democratic principles? The transition to more sustainable energy systems will be gradual and may take longer time than expected. Sustainable development is a process involving conflicts between different aspects of sustainability and it is a value-based concept, which means that a participatory process involving key actors including the public is crucial for the development. The Chinese vertical model is compelling for many developing countries because it produces fast results on a massive scale. A horizontal planning system is slower but more resilient and adaptive concerning complexity of the urban fabric. In a new project, based more on horizontal principles, a Swedish planning support system, CITYLAB, is now being tested in a Chinese context.

Keywords: urban planning models; energy systems; China; Sweden; CITYLAB (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:155670

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.79426

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