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8/05/2012 On May 3, Gengtian Zhang, Director of Research at the Urban China Initiative (UCI), gave a lecture on how to promote healthy urbanization for the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in Sichuan Province. Most of the 100 delegates at the talk were urban planning and policy directors and professionals, mainly from the NDRC offices for Sichuan Province, Kuoquan County, and individual cities in Sichuan. Zhang's lecture described the direction and focus of urbanization development inChina, including some research results from an international perspective, and proposed how to promote healthy urban development in China's cities. The lecture focused on six main ideas critical to China's continuing urbanization, including promoting a healthy model of urban development, improving the quality of urban planning, promoting the welfare of migrant workers and their integration into urban areas, improving China's city layouts, advancing urban agglomeration and megaregion development, and improving urbanization policies and regulations. Zhang opened by discussing the significance of promoting the urbanization process from the perspective of expanding domestic demand and enhancing economic and social development. He also described the main findings of UCI's recent report, "The 2011 Urban Sustainability Index", particularly relating to its implications for sustainable development. He stressed that we should regard migrant worker integration into cities as most important task in the next phase of China's urbanization. In regards to urban layout and physical planning, he described the future Functional Area Plan for Chinese cities, including the "two horizontal and three vertical" urbanization strategy pattern (to make Lianyungang-Urumqi channel and Yangtze channel two horizontal axis, and make coastal line, Haerbin-Beijing-Guangzhou channel and Baotou-Kunming channel three vertical axis of Urbanization zoning strategy

8/05/2012 On May 3, Gengtian Zhang, Director of Research at the Urban China Initiative (UCI), gave a lecture on how to promote healthy urbanization for the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in Sichuan Province. Most of the 100 delegates at the talk were urban planning and policy directors and professionals, mainly from the NDRC offices for Sichuan Province, Kuoquan County, and individual cities in Sichuan. Zhang's lecture described the direction and focus of urbanization development inChina, including some research results from an international perspective, and proposed how to promote healthy urban development in China's cities. The lecture focused on six main ideas critical to China's continuing urbanization, including promoting a healthy model of urban development, improving the quality of urban planning, promoting the welfare of migrant workers and their integration into urban areas, improving China's city layouts, advancing urban agglomeration and megaregion development, and improving urbanization policies and regulations. Zhang opened by discussing the significance of promoting the urbanization process from the perspective of expanding domestic demand and enhancing economic and social development. He also described the main findings of UCI's recent report, "The 2011 Urban Sustainability Index", particularly relating to its implications for sustainable development. He stressed that we should regard migrant worker integration into cities as most important task in the next phase of China's urbanization. In regards to urban layout and physical planning, he described the future Functional Area Plan for Chinese cities, including the "two horizontal and three vertical" urbanization strategy pattern (to make Lianyungang-Urumqi channel and Yangtze channel two horizontal axis, and make coastal line, Haerbin-Beijing-Guangzhou channel and Baotou-Kunming channel three vertical axis of Urbanization zoning strate

[ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Adolf K.Y. Ng, James J. Wang Paru dans : Research in Transportation Economics, Volume 35, Issue 1, Pages 1-66 (May 2012) Editorial 1. Introduction Globalization has brought China ever close to the rest of the world not only through its trade and transport networks, but also many transport-related issues that seem to be in common among other countries, while simultaneously with special causes deep-rooted from its unique pathway of development especially in the past several decades. The major fundamental difference of China's development from other countries lies in its economy in general, while the transport sector, in particular, lies in the role of the government. Indeed, since the global financial crisis in 2008, advanced economies, such as the US and several EU countries, have intensified on how to redefine and strengthen the role of the state within respective economies. On the contrary, the Chinese situation is exactly the other way round: the debate is about how to reduce interferences from the very strong hands of the government towards a real regulated market. In this respect, the transport sector typifies this ongoing marketization process. On one extreme, the mode of highway transportation is fully marketized: private investors may construct toll expressways in almost any provinces, either as joint ventures partnering with state-owned firms or just as fully private developers. On the other side of the continuum, after more than three decades of 'reforms', railway infrastructures, as well as their operation, are still fully and tightly controlled by the Ministry of Railways (MOR) through its subsidiary's monopoly. In-between the highways and railways are air and maritime transportation, both of which being characterized by oligopolies with two to three state-owned listed companies taking up more than 80% of the market share. Given such situation, there is a clear interest for further understanding and re

UCI delegation participated in first annual NCF summit in Paris 25/05/2012 The Chinese delegation takes a group photo with Lady Barbara, Judge, Chairman of the UK Pension Protection Fund. The first annual New Cities Foundation (NCF) Summit was held in Paris on May 14-16. The summit brought together more than 500 urban policy makers and thought leaders to a three-day conference on global urbanization, with China as one of the core focuses. The mayor of Paris delivered a welcome speech. Other speakers including Gregor Robertson, Mayor of Vancouver; Ron Huldai, Mayor of Tel Aviv; Khalifa Sall, Mayor of Dakar; Greg Clark, UK Minister of State for Decentralisation and Cities; as well as the CEOs of General Motors, Ericsson, Cisco, and Suez gas. The Urban China Initiative (UCI), a partner of the NCF, assisted in organizing the summit by inviting and organizing 16 government delegates, enterprise leaders, and academics from China, as well as designing the plenary session "A Closer Look at Urban China: Towards the Urban Billion." Chinese delegates shared their insights as speakers at plenary and breakout sessions, including: "Securing Investments for the Urban Century: How do we Pay for the Urban Boom," which featured Li Dongming, General Manager of the Urban Fund at China Development Bank Capital, as a speaker. "Hard and Software City," which featured Jonathan Woetzel, Co-Chair of the Urban China Initiative, Senior Director at McKinsey & Co., as a speaker. "A Closer Look at Urban China: Towards the Urban Billion," which featured five speakers from the UCI delegation, including Yuan Yue, CEO and Chairman of Horizon Research Consultancy Group; James Lee, AIA LEED-AP, President of iContinuum Group; Jonathan Woetzel; Xiao Jincheng, Deputy Director of the Land Economy and Regional Research Bureau at the National Development and Reform Commission; and Xie Chengxiang, Deputy Mayor of Huangshi in Hubei Province. "Modern Urban

DOI : http://dx.doi.org.gate3.inist.fr/10.1016/j.habitatint.2011.05.006 [ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Terry H.Y. Li, S. Thomas Ng, Martin Skitmore Paru dans : Habitat International, Volume 36, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 47-56 Abstract Many governments world-wide are increasingly encouraging the involvement of interested individuals, groups and organisations in their public infrastructure and construction (PIC) projects as a means of improving the openness, transparency and accountability of the decision-making process and help improve the projects' long-term viability and benefits to the community. In China, however, the current participatory mechanism at the project level exists only as part of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process. With an increasing demand for PIC projects and social equality in China, this suggests a need to bring the participatory process into line with international practice. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to identify the weaknesses of EIA-based public participation in China and the means by which it may be improved for the whole lifecycle of PIC schemes. To do this, the results of a series of interviews with a diverse group of experts is reported which analyse the nature and extent of existing problems of public participation in EIA and suggestions for improvement. These indicate that the current level of participation in PIC projects is quite limited, particularly in the crucial earlier stages, primarily due to traditional culture and values, uneven progress in the adoption of participatory mechanisms, the risk of not meeting targets and lack of confidence in public competence. Finally, a process flowchart is proposed to guide construction practitioners and the community in general. Highlights ► We examine China's environmental impact assessment (EIA) based public participation. ► The interview findings reveal that China's EIA-based participation is weak. ► We identify