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Urban China: The Tortuous Path Towards Sustainability

In recent years, the Chinese government has attempted to pursue a new phase of urbanization, tackling some of the environmental and social costs of previous decades of tumultuous growth. A new agenda for urban sustainability has been put forward starting from the release of the National Urbanization Plan (NUP) in March 2014, (State Council of the People’s Republic of China [SCPRC], 2014), addressing the challenges posed in particular by the impact of rapid urbanization. This shift has been fostered by the policy agenda of President Xi Jingping, labeled as the ‘New Normal’, primarily driven by the need to reposition the Chinese economy in a changing global scenario, and contextually dictated by the relative economic slowdown which the country started to enter in 2010. This has opened up a discussion on the institutional reforms needed to ensure a sustainable urban transition, and their effectiveness in the current economic situation. With this in mind, the goal of this policy brief will be to assess what has been achieved in respect to urban sustainability and to discuss conflicts, prospects and potential pitfalls for the future urbanization process of China.