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Abstract: China has recently seen the proliferation of regional plans. This paper tries to understand the development of regional plans from the perspective of state restructuring and changing regional governance. In contrast to conventional wisdom, which predominantly describes China''s decentralization, another aspect of ‘recentralization’ is highlighted here. The paper focuses on a case study of Yangtze River Delta Regional Plan. It is argued that the latest regional plans are used by the central government to coordinate diverse local interests to achieve a more balanced development. However, complex politics between different levels and divisions of government make this plan an impossible project to deliver central regulation on contemporary city-regions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Urban agglomeration (UA) is a complex artificial system. Carrying capacity reflects the environmental capability to support human activity. From the perspective of resource supply and demand, the paper selects 12 representative indicators to evaluate the carrying capacity of land, water, transportation and environment. 16 cities of the UA in the Yangtze River Delta, China, are selected as data samples. Time-series global factor analysis is employed to extract the principal factors of the index of 2000 and 2008. The results show that the comprehensive carrying capacity of the UA tends to benign development as a whole except for Shanghai. Carrying capacities of land and water have become the two critical factors to restrict economic and social development. Based on the hierarchical cluster analysis, the values differentiate the UA into significant gradients. The coefficient of variation shows that the spatial differentiation is conspicuous and expanding. The paper also proposes some policies for the government and planners to successfully design and implement the UA. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Transport infrastructure development is generally perceived as catalyst for economic growth. This has been highlighted in previous literature, generally focusing on the economic impact of transport infrastructure investments. This paper contributes to spatial econometrics by examining the causal relationship between economic strength and accessibility gains due to the development of expressways and high-speed rail, taking the Yangtze River Delta as research object. Spatial regression models that accommodate for the influence of spatial autocorrelation and the newly defined variable “weighted mode's average travel time (WMATT)” and other explanatory variables are developed for quantitative analysis. Estimation results indicate that cities' gross domestic product increases significantly with population, passenger traffic, and foreign direct investment. Especially, all the estimated models indicate that WMATT is significantly and negatively associated with gross domestic product, revealing that inter-city accessibility gains (travel-time savings) can enhance economic strength. The robustness analysis on the estimators indicates that while the β -coefficient of WMATT generally increases with the share of expressways and high-speed rail in land transportation, its p -value increases and its effect may become insignificant if inter-city travel time becomes fast enough. Findings from this study highlight the travel-speed up measures such as open China's expressway freely and speed up the high-speed rail rather than blind development and endless investments can also play an important role in enhancing economic strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Yangtze River Delta (YRD), one of China’s most developed, dynamic, densely populated and concentrated industrial area, is growing into an influential world-class metropolitan area and playing an important role in China’s economic and social development. The formation and the urbanization process of YRD are inseparable from climate change. This paper explores such interrelationship from two perspectives. On one hand, using historic data, we summarized the urbanization process in the YRD, and concluded that climate change has been shaping the Delta and its socioeconomic development. On the other hand, the urbanization process of the Delta has shaped its geography and built environment, which, however, are not adaptable to future climate change. Potential disruptive effects include large flooded land area, flood disasters, production and energy inefficiency, and other environmental threats. It is imperative to adopt policies and programs to mitigate and adapt to climate change in the fast urbanization process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]