A Low Carbon Model When Pursuit Of Urbanization In China

This book summarizes experiences from the World Bank s activities related to low-carbon urban development in China. It highlights the need for low-carbon city development and presents details on specific sector-level experiences and lessons, a framework for action, and financing opportunities.

In the face of increasingly serious resource and environmental challenges, the world has already accepted low-carbon development as the main way forward for future city construction. Chinese cities have encountered many problems during their development, including land constraints, energy shortages, traffic congestion and air pollution. For this reason, the national meeting of the Central Work Conference on Urbanization made the strategic decision to take a new approach to urbanization and indicated that in future the key features of urbanization in China will be low-carbon development and harmony between the environment and resources. This book discusses the "low-carbon city" as the new pattern of Chinese urbanization. This represents a major change and takes "intensive land use,” “intelligent,” “green” and “low carbon" as its key words. Low carbon will become an important future development direction for Chinese urbanization development. In the twenty-first Century in response to the global climate change, countries have started a wave of low-carbon city construction. But in China, there are still many disputes and misunderstandings surrounding the issue. Due to a lack of research, low-carbon city construction in China is still in the early stages, and while there have been successes, there have also been failures. There are complex and diverse challenges in applying low-carbon development methods in the context of today’s Chinese cities. The construction of low-carbon cities requires efficient government, the technological innovation of enterprises, and professional scholars, but also efforts on the part of the public to change their daily activities. Based on the above considerations, the collection brings together experts from urban planning and design, clean-energy systems, low-carbon transportation, new types of city infrastructure and smart cities etc., in the hope of forming some solutions for Chinese low-carbon city development.

The continuing rapid growth and development of China's cities brings many complex challenges. Tasked with supporting strong economic development that provides jobs and a good quality of life for its growing number of residents, China's cities also must ensure sustainable development in line with national efforts to transition to a less carbon-intensive economy, as outlined in China's 12th Five-Year Plan. Sustainable Low-Carbon City Development in China summarizes, through the specific lens of low-carbon development, the lessons of the World Bank's activities related to sustainable urban development in China. The various chapters present overall approaches and achievements in low-carbon city developments and highlight specific experiences across all urban sectors, including energy, transport, solid waste, water, and waste water. The book also explores cities' role in climate adaptation and opportunities presented by carbon finance and other global mechanisms to finance low-carbon city development. The World Bank project data and experience combined with the national and international experience presented in this edited book deliver both a broad picture and actionable steps for China's urban development. The chapters argue that China's cities not only need to, but also have an opportunity and the ability to integrate sustainable low-carbon development in their urban development. Low-carbon efforts align closely with the sustainable urbanization agenda and the book points to multiple benefits, such as improved air quality and urban livability, that can be derived from implementing this urgent agenda. The intended audience of this edited book is government officials of municipalities, cities, and townships in China who will be defining policies and programs to achieve the targets of economic growth and carbon emission reductions emerging from the 12th Five-Year Plan. The lessons presented may also be of interest to other countries and development partners supporting low-carbon urban programs.

This book examines the sustainability transition theory in the context of urbanization in China, tracing the development of eco and low-carbon cities. It examines how ideas on building eco-cities and low-carbon cities travel from nation to nation, how they are adopted in the Chinese administrative context and what role inter-scalar actors play in getting the ideas transferred, translated and operationalized on the ground. Offering an overarching theoretical framework that incorporates all urban sustainability experiments in China, the book conducts a comprehensive analysis of the master plans of these new towns and summarizes the normative transition targets of sustainable urban experiments. It explores how they differ from each other and how they influence transition dynamics in practice. By examining four eco and low-carbon new towns deemed representative of current major approaches to sustainability transition management in China, the book provides a detailed depiction of generic transition management and explains the different transitional trajectories for each type of sustainable urban experiment. It demonstrates how subnational-level and city-level transitions mediate the national transition. Through a thorough inquiry into inter-scalar dynamics, institutional arrangements and techno-social innovations in sustainable urban experiments, the book links generalized transition rules and specific contexts to present a full view of the challenges, failures and territorial problems of eco and low-carbon new towns. This book makes a novel contribution to the study of Chinese urbanization by revisiting issues and problems of contemporary urban China. The reflection on these urban issues will provide implications to policymakers, professionals and the common reader interested in the future sustainable urbanism in China.

In China, as Internet of Things and cloud-computing have been widely used in various areas, the concept of Intelligent City quickly became one of the most exciting topics in urban development. Various institutes and organizations (e.g., National Technology Department, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences) proposed their ideas on how to build intelligent cities in China. Intelligent City has tremendous benefits to modern China. First of all, China needs to construct its own intelligent cities in order to realize the economic transformation (from extensive to intensive, from low end to high end and from follower to leader), the industry upgrade, as well as transformation in city development. Secondly, Intelligent City is also an important new approach to boost China's economy since the traditional economic forms, such as real estate, automobiles, and import and export, are currently in a downtrend. Most importantly, utilizing the high-tech methods can help us build low-carbon cities. According to estimates, by building intelligent cities, we are able to increase the efficiency of energy saving and emission reduction by 30%-40%. In order to facilitate the healthy development of intelligent cities in China, build the competitive advantage of Chinese cities in the world, and respond to the high demand for information on Intelligent City from readers, this book discusses in detail the status, current problems, perspectives and methods in the development of Intelligent City in China.

This book explores the relationship between urban form and greenhouse gas emissions in China, providing new insights for policy, urban planning and management. Drawing on the results of a four-year multidisciplinary research project, the book examines how factors such as urban households’ access to services and jobs, land use mixes and provision of public transport impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The authors analyse data from a wide range of sources including 4677 sample households from four major Chinese cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Xi’an – with diverse locations, urban spatial structures and population sizes. The book explores residents’ attitudes to reducing GHG emissions and advances knowledge relating to three environmental scales – cross-metropolitan, intra-city and neighbourhood level. It also contributes to debates on low carbon policy by revealing the relevance of urban planning parameters at both the macro and micro levels. The book will be of interest to scholars in the areas of urban planning, urban management, environmental sustainability and resource utilisation, as well as urban policy makers and planners who are working toward developing low carbon, sustainable cities of the future.