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Highlights • Interactive relationships between various multi-level actors in sustainability transition. • Inter-scalar dynamics in transition management in ordinary cities. • Challenges for the national campaign for sustainable urbanism. • Competing and congruent interests from different scales in sustainable urban experiments. Abstract China has been undergoing a boom of sustainable urban new town projects against the background of urban rescaling and regional integration. Most current research focuses on flagship projects and mega-cities, failing to disentangle the interactions between cross-scale actors and the dynamic patterns of institutional and social-techno innovations in rank-and-file cities. Applying sustainability transition theory and the Multi-level Perspective (MLP) framework, this paper takes Zhuhai's Western Central Eco New District (Town) as a case study to investigate the interactive relationships between various actors and institutional niches. Through intensive interviews with government officials, developers, professionals and local villagers, as well as an analysis of government planning and regulation archives, we argue that the interests of actors from different scales are split in the transition process and may pose a threat to the reconfiguration of the niche-regime dynamics. This may lead to a dilemma in the sustainability transition of new towns. Institutional fragmentation from lower scales might be another obstacle for the transition management and niche development of the eco new town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large amount of population moved from countryside to cities in China during its urbanization in the past two decades. The majority of these people have no formal qualifications for city residency, and they are so-called ‘floating population’. The increase of this group of people has induced the pressure of land use in cities, and the contradiction between the demand and the supply of urban land has been intensifying particularly in those developed regions in China. This paper examines the impacts of floating population on urban land by presenting the interrelations between floating population and urban land expansion from the perspective of production land and living land. Structural equation model (SEM) is employed in conducting the analysis. The result shows that the floating population alone does not have direct effect on urban land expansion, but have indirect impacts through engaging in the production or living process. It is particularly interesting that floating people's living conditions have no direct positive effect on the increase of construction land. Based on the research results, suggestions are offered for improvements in government policy towards a more sustainable and integrated urbanization, including the provision of housing support, the formation of more urbanized society and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1990s, Chinese cities have been experiencing significant suburbanization with massive numbers of people moving out of city centers. Facing this background, this paper aims to identify the typology of residential resettlements in suburban areas, and analyze the mechanisms of each residential resettlement via archive studies, census tracks and field research instead of the traditional macro-demographic approach. Five types of resettlement are identified, comprising public housing districts for poor people with housing difficulties, low-end private housing districts for lower socio-economic people, multiple housing districts (containing public housing and low-end private housing) for displaced shantytown residents, and villa areas for the wealthy. This suburban residential resettlement pattern is generally different from that in Western cities, which is largely attributed to the Chinese governments' monopoly of land supply and public service provision. It is also concluded that the state power, capitalist actors (e.g., developers and private enterprises), and other professionals (e.g., planners and architects) have become the Chinese characterized ‘pushing’ factors and actors in driving the typology of suburban resettlement housing in the context of urbanization era of China. Besides, the five typology of resettlement housing has brought about socio-spatial consequences including a spatial mismatch for lower socio-economic groups in suburban areas, which may lead to the formation of poverty belts around Chinese cities. This may provide important implication for understanding the residential resettlement in other developing countries with similar context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of all sustainable city concepts, eco-cities and low-carbon cities have received a national endorsement in China, with such pilot towns under construction nationwide. However, the performance of eco and low-carbon cities in China has long been heatedly debated, with many negative arguments delineating them as profit-seeking and image-building projects simply capped with impressive names. In reality, while some projects have not fulfilled expectations, most are still at the first stage of construction, so it is too early to regard eco and low-carbon cities as a failure. In this paper, the question of how eco and low-carbon new towns differ from conventional ones in their social, environmental and economic characteristics is posed. Compared to conventional new town plans, the eco and low-carbon city plans incorporate more of a focus on sustainability principles. We examine such perceptions by comparing the master plans of eco, low-carbon and conventional new towns in various aspects ranging from general principles to specific design. The analysis indicates the master plans of the three groups of new towns vary in different ways. The eco-cities and low-carbon cities reflect two trends to promote urban sustainability. The eco new towns are more concerned with the promotion of a sustainable way of life, with its planning focus evenly distributed among all aspects. They particularly stress the creation of an aesthetically pleasing livable environment. In contrast, low-carbon new towns are concerned with the promotion of a sustainable way of production, with an uneven emphasis on the economic sectors such as industrial integration and transformation. However, the master plans only reveal how eco/low-carbon cities are originally intended to differ from non-eco/low-carbon-cities when they start and more comprehensive studies are needed for it to be possible to predict where they will go in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban redevelopment is a crucial prescription in response to the problems associated with limited land, urban decay, and fading buildings, especially for China's megacities. Given that state-dominated urban redevelopment is slow and limited, the Chinese government has proposed a pioneering market-oriented approach to drive urban redevelopment in Shenzhen. This study seeks to examine the impacts of market-oriented institutional arrangements on land redevelopment approval duration (LRAD) in China from the perspective of public and private interests. Various institutional arrangements are observed under the institutional change of urban redevelopment in Shenzhen, and they are differed by the nature of the applicants, including the original property owners (old factory owner (OFO)), their representatives (e.g., village committees (VC) and the government agency involved in redevelopment (URB)), and developers (DP , second-hand property owner). A number of hypotheses are developed, and empirical tests are conducted to verify or dismiss our hypotheses with the data in Shenzhen. The empirical findings indicate that (1) The LRAD is the shortest when the applicant is the OFO and the longest if the applicant is the local government officials such as URB. (2) Compared with the URB , the LRAD is shorter if the VC is the applicant. (3) The LRAD is longer for the projects with a larger redevelopment scale and the projects with more dedicated public facilities. The findings shed new insights into the design and practical effects of market-oriented institutional arrangements on the progress performance of urban redevelopment, which can give the local government a timely reminder that they should examine and approve urban redevelopment schemes in a soundly planned and socially sustainable fashion. • Under bottom up urban redevelopment, property owners are endowed with land redevelopment right and allowed to apply for redevelopment directly. • Institutional arrangements are differed by the nature of the applicant who owns different sets of property/land rights. • Land redevelopment approval duration (LRAD) is the shortest when the applicant is the sole private property owners. • LRAD is the longest if the applicant is the local government officials. • Compared with the local government, LRAD is shorter if village committee (VC) is the applicant due to lower agency cost. • LRAD is longer for the projects with a larger-scale redevelopment site and the projects with more developer obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We identified that whether and how urban greening show paradox results in economic and social sustainability. • We demonstrated that urban planning practices could incorporate the variegated sustainability. • We provide evidence on how land use planning could offer variegated sustainability for individuals. Cities globally have incorporated sustainable development into their planning, and led the way in responding to the world's ecological crisis by "going green". Urban green space accessibility is considered as the key to urban sustainability progress, not only environmentally, but also economically and socially. However, previous research rarely considers the latter two dimensions together. This study therefore joins the sustainability discussion from a new perspective, in particular the debate concerning the value of urban green spaces and whether and how they contribute to the variegated sustainability agenda? Based on data for 76,595 residential housing units in New York City, measuring the economic gains and equity losses from current urban green space accessibility reveals a paradox in sustainable development where the economic and social benefits of urban green space accessibility are seldom compatible, tending to involve a trade-off of some kind. In response, it is proposed that the spatial patterns of land use can represent a step towards multifaceted aspects of sustainability, with the provision of numerous small green areas that are "affordable and accessible" throughout the city being a more appropriate policy agenda than a few vast parks. Such a policy approach, it is argued, will provide a 'win-win' situation in terms of simultaneously contributing to both economic prosperity and the social justice of sustainability. This research also provided evidence for the institutional-driven countries such as China on how to learn from western experiences on planning land use patterns that are sustainable for individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]