- From Rate Growth to Quality Improvement: Promoting Policy System for New-Urbanization in China   169 kb by    Yu, Cheng & Chen, Jinfu & Yang, Xi | cheng_yu@hust.edu.cn    Short Outline After the financial crisis in 2008, Chinese Government recognized that urbanization could drive domestic demand (Fang, 2010), and promote China's economy development status. Therefore the Chinese Government focused on urbanization development increasingly and widely. Abstract After reform and opening-up in 1978, China’s urbanization developed rapidly. Although the rate of urbanization varies in different regions, the average rate reached 51.3% (2011, National Development and Reform Commission). After the financial crisis in 2008, Chinese Government recognized that urbanization could drive domestic demand (Fang, 2010), and promote China's economy development status. Therefore the Chinese Government focused on urbanization development increasingly and widely. However, fast development of society and economy, during the past 30 years, forced the urbanization of China to face depletion of environmental resources, unequal income distribution, shortage of welfare and other issues. Meanwhile, both Central China's emerging strategy and the strategy of Resource-conserving and Environment-friendly Society lead China’s urbanization to a new development direction. New urbanization, with a lot of discussions (Qiu, 2010; Cao, 2001; Wen, 2000; Zhou, 2006; Yang, 2012; Song, 2006; Zhang, 2009), simply is more concerned about the quality of urbanization, including environmental quality, living standards of immigrants, as well as the level of industrial development. Different with developed countries, urbanization in China is promoted by local government (Qiu, 2010). In developed countries, process of urbanization is bottom-up development and synchronized with the industrialization. However, in China, policies are the most important influencing factors on urbanization. Therefore, related policy reforms could help to resolve the contradictions in the process of urbanization development. Nevertheless, new urbanization might promote reform of urban comprehensive competitiveness and coordination of regional development models, so as to realize the harmonious development of social economy and resources environment. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper