Rescaling of the land regime in the making of city-regions: A case study of China’s Pearl River Delta

Ubiquitous in fast-urbanising China, land-driven urban growth is increasingly inter-urban in nature – a trend that is underexplored in the literature. Grounded in a conceptual framework concerning the rescaling of the land regime, this study probes the unfolding land development processes of city-re...

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Published inUrban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Vol. 60; no. 3; pp. 483 - 500
Main Authors Zhang, Xianchun, Li, Yi, Zhou, Changchang, Luan, Xiaofan, Yuan, Feng
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.02.2023
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Case studies
Cities
City centres
Cooperation
International cooperation
Land
Land development
Regionalism
Regions
Rescaling
Rivers
Scaling
Spawning
Subnational government
Territoriality
Urban areas
Urban development
Urban growth
Urban sprawl
Pearl River (China)
China
区域合作
省级政府
city-regionalism
provincial government
珠三角
土地制度
Pearl River Delta
regional cooperation
land regime
城市区域化
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Summary:Ubiquitous in fast-urbanising China, land-driven urban growth is increasingly inter-urban in nature – a trend that is underexplored in the literature. Grounded in a conceptual framework concerning the rescaling of the land regime, this study probes the unfolding land development processes of city-regionalism. Key findings of an examination of the Shenzhen–Shanwei Special Cooperation Zone in the Pearl River Delta are as follows: land regime rescaling is an emergent driving force for city-region making in China; the rescaled land regime centres on uneven capacities among the states of cooperating cities and benefit sharing (immediate land-related profit and potential long-term profit); provincial government engagement is fundamental to legitimatising this contested process; the rescaled land regime has been orchestrated by state interests in land development, rather than business interests released by marketisation, spawning a ‘stretching’ state territoriality of the central city. This article furthers the field’s understanding of a ‘world of city-regionalisms’ through a situated account of emerging city-regionalism characterised by land development in the Chinese context.
ISSN:0042-0980
1360-063X
DOI:10.1177/00420980221101781