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Ecological planning is one of the most important tools in realizing city's sustainable development. The ecological planning in China was started in the 1980s, and on the basis of assimilating the existing theoretical and practical experiences from western countries, basically formed a theoretical system in accordance with the Chinese characteristics and acquired a series of practical results. This paper reviewed the research and development processes of China' s ecological planning. It is considered that the study of our ecological planning was derived from the geographical principles of land resources ecological utilization, the ecological principles of complex ecological system theory, and the combination of these two principles. The ecological planning has experienced three research stages, i. e., single-disciplinary exploration, multi-disciplinary and multi-perspective study (including landscape ecology, ecology and urban planning), and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration research. The ecological planning and the related conceptions, primary principles, main academic points, and representatives at each research stage were summarized, and through the discrimination of the basic conceptions of ecological planning and other related plans, it was pointed out that ecological planning is an general conception which includes land ecological planning, urban ecological planning, and eco-city planning, and the principles and theories of ecological planning should be integrated into, led and restricted the present planning system to promote the city's and regional sustainable development.

Ecological civilization is to normalize human development behaviors to harmonize the relationships between social and ecological development and eco-environment protection. In this paper, a comparative analysis was made on the ecological demonstration activities of ecological demonstration areas led by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, exemplar cities of national environmental protection, and ecological provinces, cities, and counties. It was considered that all the ecological demonstration activities had the problems of lacking pertinence of construction goals, disordered construction subjects, inefficient construction processes, and lacking continuous incentive mechanisms of assessment. In the meantime, through the analysis of the connotations of eco-civilization, the relationships between eco-civilization and eco-demonstration constructions were approached, and the eco-civilization construction mode was put forward in terms of construction goal, construction subject, and construction processes and assessment. The construction mode included the construction goal based on regional characteristics; the synergistic cooperation of construction subjects, the expanding ways of public participation, and the establishment of evaluation system for comprehensively measuring the 'actions and results'.