Home > Catalogue > Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale > 53 | 2017 > Urbanization and Sustainability in China. Towards a Transformative Change?

Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale | Vol. 53 | June 2017

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Research Article

Urbanization and Sustainability in China. Towards a Transformative Change?

Verso un cambiamento trasformativo?

Daniele Brombal    Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia    

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abstract

Since the 1990s China has witnessed an urbanization process with no parallel in history. It is no overestimation to say that the country’s future will be largely shaped by it. To many respects, Chinese urbanization is stretching to the very limit the capacities of the environment to sustain development. On the other hand, it is portrayed as a crucial driver for innovation. This paper aims at shedding light over China’s urbanization potential to bring about transformative change for sustainability. It does so by analyzing the political discourse and official objectives of urbanization. Results show that sustainability has taken roots in Beijing’s approach to urbanization. However, its narrative and objectives remain anchored to the same conventional ideas of incremental development, which to this day has inspired post-reform China’s path to modernization. The potential for transformative change in China’s urbanization appears therefore limited.

Published
June 20, 2017
Accepted
March 14, 2017
Submitted
Dec. 20, 2016
Language
IT

Keywords: China • Transformative change • Political discourse • Sustainability • Urbanization • Policies

permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2385-3042/AnnOr-53-17-11

Copyright: © 2017 Daniele Brombal. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.