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JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.41,Issue2,P.150-169

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英文

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Tongji University

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Since reform and opening up began in 1978, China has developed and urbanized rapidly, and a dual urban–rural economy has evolved in its megacity regions. Unlike the United States and other countries with neoliberal regimes that rely on the market to adjust economic relations and where there is little explicit national-level planning, China is a regionally decentralized developmental state where government plays a major role in development. Coordinated urban–rural development has been national policy since 2003, and China began to experiment with what is termed integrated urban–rural development in 2006. This article describes coordinated urban–rural development in China’s 2 developing megacity regions with the most advanced coordination programs (Chengdu and Chongqing) and 2 highly urbanized megacity regions with well-developed strategies to integrate city and countryside (Shanghai and Suzhou). It describes 4 models of the coordination process: the municipal government–led top-down model (post-1990 Shanghai), empowering the entrepreneurial township government model (post-2008 Suzhou), the negotiation model (post-2003 Chengdu), and the labor transfer model (post-2003 Chongqing). It discusses the forms that integration of city and countryside have taken in the most advanced Chinese megacity regions and their implications for other cities in China and other developing countries with different characteristics and at different development stages.IntroductionHistorically, underdeveloped countries have been characterized by traditional, pre-industrial economies and low urbanization rates. Most of the population lived in the countryside or villages and worked in subsistence farming (Lewis, 1954). The subsistence economy contributed little to the nation’s modern development (Lewis, 1954). What developing countries produced other than food were simple items for domestic consumption made from local materials in small enterprises with little or no capital (Rostow, 1960). Their participation in the global economy was limited—based mostly on export of raw materials at unfavorable prices and supplying unskilled labor to foreign-owned and managed companies. With little or no capital accumulation, their economies developed very slowly.In the last 7 decades, historical patterns both of urbanization and development have profoundly changed. According to the United Nations (UN), only 30% of the world’s population was urban in 1950 (UN, 2015a). The percentage is now 54%, and the United Nations projects that it will be 66% in 2050 (UN, 2015a). Globalization has integrated the world economy to an extent inconceivable in 1950. Significant foreign direct investment has moved into even the least developed countries and foreign and domestic capital into the least developed regions of most developing countries. This may promote dependency, inequality, and environmental problems in developing countries as well as development. These profound changes make understanding relationships between urban and rural areas and appropriate government policies to coordinate the process of urban and rural development and improve the relationship between city and countryside one of the most important issues developing countries confront today.China is one of the strongest developmental states in the world. How the central government conceptualizes coordination and the way in which subnational governments have operationalized plans and policies to implement coordination are important. They can help other developing countries conceptualize how concentrated and integrated development fit into the developmental state model in their own countries.China has experienced unprecedented, spontaneous bottom-up restructuring of urban and rural areas since the mid-1980s and since 2003 has been experimenting with so-called coordinated urban–rural development policies (cheng xiang tong chou). The stated purposes of these policies include creating more efficient and equitable urbanization that benefits both urban and rural areas by facilitating the movement of people, goods, capital, and services and narrowing gaps in urban–rural income, public services, infrastructure, and productivity (Peoples Republic of China [PRC], 2003). Coordinated urban–rural development is intended to help rationalize physical land use in peri-urban areas—the most rapidly growing and most dynamic areas in Asian city-regions (LeGates & Hudalah, 2014; McGee, 2008; N. R. Smith, 2014; Sui & Zeng, 2001; Wang, Liu, Li, & Li, 2016; Webster, 2003). However, coordinated urban–rural development is much more than a physical design program and it is not limited to peri-urban areas. It is intended to fundamentally restructure economic and social relations between city and countryside to produce a more equitable and harmonious society.In 2007, the central government designated Chongqing and Chengdu national pilot regions for coordinated urban–rural development. Though many cities in China have now been pursuing coordinated urban–rural development to some extent for more than 15 years, the idea of integrated urban–rural development (cheng xiang yi ti hua) is a more recent policy concept. In 2006, the national government suggested the concept. In 2008, Suzhou began experimenting with integrated urban–rural development. In 2014, the central government designated Suzhou China’s first and, so far, only national pilot city-region for integrated urban development. As is often the case with pilot programs in China, the national government identified the way in which urban–rural development was occurring as a problem, articulated a desire to improve the process and a desired end state in very general terms, and left it to lower levels of government to develop policies and programs to achieve the desired ends.1China has made coordinating and integrating urban–rural development an integral part of their national policy to integrate the dual urban–rural economy into a unitary one. But what exactly these terms mean and how policies to accomplish them should be implemented remain deliberately ambiguous and vary from region to region. The best way to clarify the concepts is to provide detailed descriptions and critiques of the policies pursued by case study megacity regions at different stages of development. Accordingly, this article analyzes coordinated urban–rural development in China’s two developing megacity regions with the most advanced coordination programs (Chengdu and Chongqing) and two highly urbanized megacity regions with well-developed strategies to integrate city and countryside (Shanghai and Suzhou). It discusses the implications of the models for other Chinese cities and cities in other developing countries with different characteristics and at different development stages.Development theories and China as a developmental stateEconomists, urban planners, geographers, sociologists, and demographers have developed a large body of theory about the way in which relations between urban and rural areas evolve as societies modernize and urbanize. Three strands of theory stand out.The first strand contains linear stages of growth models developed from the 1940s through the 1960s. Harvard economist Walt Whitman Rostow’s stages of growth model is the most important of these. Rostow (1960) argued that countries pass through five stages of economic development, which he called traditional society, preconditions for takeoff, takeoff, drive to maturity, and the age of high mass consumption. Rostow’s model views development as a process that produces a continuum of different economic, spatial, and social relations as the economy develops and the proportion of the population living in urban areas increases. Rostow’s theory assumes that development is linear and that all countries progress through stages similar to developed Western European and North American countries. But in the 58 years since Rostow’s classic statement, developing countries (including China) have not followed such a uniform linear progression. Rostow’s model does not adequately consider postindustrial and informational activities, globalization, or non-Western social structures.The second strand contains theories of structural change developed from the 1950s through the 1970s. University of Manchester economist Arthur O. Lewis’s dual development model is the most important (Gollin, 2014). Lewis (1954) documented within-country income and productivity gaps between what he termed subsistence and capitalist sectors of their economies: dual economy theory. He concluded that the large surplus labor force in rural areas of developing countries has a negligible, zero, or even negative marginal productivity, and without capital accumulation these rural areas cannot develop. Lewis believed that market forces would promote development but was sympathetic to government programs that would address market failure or speed up naturally occurring market forces. Lewis’s most important policy prescription was for government to adopt policies to speed up absorption of surplus rural labor into the capitalist sector as traditional societies develop. Lewis’s theories about dual development and the absorption of surplus rural labor apply to China today. Average wages in urban China are now nearly triple average wages in rural areas (PRC, National Statistics Bureau [NSB], 2016). In the last 30 years, China has experienced the most rapid and massive migration of rural labor to urban areas in human history as surplus rural labor has left the land. In 2010, 260 million members of China’s floating population lived somewhere other than their hukou address (PRC, 2012). Lewis’s other assumptions do not describe conditions in contemporary China (C. Chen, LeGates, Zhao, & Fang, 2017).The third strand of theory about development of rural and urban areas deals with the urbanization process. Stanford University demographer Kingsley Davis’s S-curve (Davis, 1965) of the urbanization of the human population is the most important of these theories. Davis (1965) argued that urbanization follows an attenuated S-curve with a long left tail of slow urbanization, a rapidly rising mid-section as a country industrializes, and then a flattening right tail that will eventually remain level or decline. A country may be considered fully urbanized when its urbanization ratio is in the 75 to 85% range.China was late to urbanize and has urbanized rapidly since the early 1980s. Its urbanization rate was only 10% in 1950 and 18% in 1980 but 56% in 2015 (PRC NSB, 2016). China is still in the steep part of the Davis S-curve. Leading studies project that China’s annual growth rate will continue at about 1% a year for the next 20 to 30 years and that China’s urban population will increase by 250 to 350 million people during that time period (UN, 2015b; World Bank and DRCSC, 2013).Some theorists and some governments—including the Chinese government today—take the position that urbanization will foster development and that government should speed up the process of urbanization (PRC, 2014). We feel the causality is the reverse. How fast a region should urbanize depends on its development level and ability to absorb rural labor into the modern sectors of its economy. Context-sensitive plans and policies to coordinate urban–rural development are a better approach than a one-size-fits-all emphasis of speeding up urbanization.These three strands of theory provide insights about China’s urbanization, but China is a special case that has urbanized and will continue to urbanize in its own unique way. Understanding different models of coordinated and integrated urban–rural development in China can produce better planning and policy for other developing economies.In contrast to the United States’ development model based on classic liberal and neoliberal faith in private property and free markets (Harvey, 2007; Smith, 1776/1977) and the Soviet Russian and Maoist development models based on Marxist faith in state ownership of property and a centralized planned economy (Marx, 1867/2008), the developmental state model—where the central government plans and guides development but private firms and market economies function within the nation—is a useful framework for understanding China’s development trajectory (Beeson, 2009; Knight, 2014; Riskin, 2009). The classic development state is best defined as one in which the state gives overriding priority to rapid economic growth and adopts policies to achieve that objective (Knight, 2014).The first-generation developmental states—Japan and Korea—implemented top-down industrial policies to promote economic development with little concern for the natural environmental or quality of urban life. Like Korea and Japan in the 1950s, at the beginning of reform and opening up in the late 1970s, China measured development success almost exclusively in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) growth and output indicators like how many tons of steel a factory produced, regardless of externalities such as air and water pollution they imposed on others, factory working conditions, economic and spatial inequality, public health, or livability.China has become a successful developmental state with unique Chinese characteristics. It now has a market socialist economy that blends central planning with markets. In China, government officials at different levels are held responsible for meeting targets laid down in responsibility contracts that specify measures such as GDP growth, industrial output, and the amount of foreign direct investment. However, starting in the mid-2000s, China began to evolve into a “human developmental state” (Riskin, 2009, p. 32–58); that is, a state that seeks to meet human development goals, such as those proposed by the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 (United Nations, 2015a) and their most recent Human Development Report (United Nations, 2016), rather than just economic goals (Knight, 2014). These include reduction of poverty and inequality, improving public services, gender equity, better social security, human/environmental balance, livability, and better protected personal freedoms. China’s stated national policy now aims to improve the relationship between urban and rural environments, develop cities in more sustainable and carbon-neutral ways, and close the urban–rural development gap in infrastructure, social services, and quality of life as well as develop the economy. Though economic development remains the overwhelmingly paramount concern, there are now many tangible, funded projects in China underway directed to human development goals. Though still limited, concrete measures that have been introduced include modifying responsibility contracts to reward officials who achieved redistributive objectives such as raising city minimum wages or reducing pollution and to punish officials held responsible for causing local social discontent (Knight, 2014). China’s 2014 National New Style Urbanization Plan (PRC, 2014) states that China’s urbanization policy should no longer consider only economic goals but should also conisder environmental, livability, and equity goals.In terms of urban planning and urban development, China’s developmental state model has three particularly important attributes: (a) goals now include social equity, human/environment balance, and quality of life as well as economic development; (b) China implements these goals through a regionally decentralized governance structure; and (c) it relies on both top-down policies and stimulation of bottom-up initiatives to accomplish state objectives.Though China remains a centralized developmental state, national policy is carried out in increasingly decentralized ways. Though the central government, through the Chinese Communist Party, maintains political control of macrolevel political decisions, they have alternately shared revenue with lower levels of government and clawed back revenue (Xu, 2011). They have alternately decentralized much authority to make development decisions to subnational governments and recentralized authority (Wu, 2015). In the early 2000s, Chinese subnational governments controlled about 70% of national total revenue, a far larger percent than the United States (46%), Germany (40%), or Russia (38%; Xu, 2011). However, China is now one of the fiscally most decentralized countries in the world (Xu, 2011).Not only is revenue and authority decentralized between the national and subnational governments in China, but it is further decentralized between the ranks of administrative divisions: provinces, cities, counties, districts, townships, towns, and administrative villages. China uses fiscal decentralization, personnel policies, and patronage relationships to achieve national goals, rather than achieving goals primarily through centrally devised top-down plans (Knight, 2014; Tsui & Wang, 2004; Xu, 2011).Data and methodsHow does the theoretical framework described above actually work in practice in Chinese cities at different stages of development? To shed light on how coordinated urban development policy contributes to China’s emerging human development state, we examine coordinated urban–rural development in China’s two developing megacity regions with the most advanced coordination programs (Chengdu and Chongqing) and two highly urbanized megacity regions with well-developed strategies to integrate city and countryside (Shanghai and Suzhou). Figure 1 shows the location of the four case study megacity regions.From coordinated to integrated urban and rural development in China’s megacity regionsAll authorsChen Chen, Richard LeGates & Chenhao Fanghttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1413285Published online:11 January 2018Figure 1. Location of four case study cities: Chengdu, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Shanghai.Display full sizeFigure 1. Location of four case study cities: Chengdu, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Shanghai.Our unit of analysis was the entire land area of each megacity region including counties and county-level cities the core city “leads” as well as township, town, and street-level administrative divisions (Yang & Wu, 2015). Shanghai and Chongqing are provincial cities, and Suzhou and Chengdu are prefecture-level cities.2 Each is as large as some countries, and they can be considered four different developmental states. Table 1 describes characteristics of the four case megacity regions.From coordinated to integrated urban and rural development in China’s megacity regionsAll authorsChen Chen, Richard LeGates & Chenhao Fanghttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1413285Published online:11 January 2018Table 1. Characteristics of the four case megacity regions.CSVDisplay Table We began with a literature review of Chinese and English books, journal articles, government reports, and web-based material including unpublished local plans, reports, and policy documents through April 2017. We used statistical and spatial secondary data analysis to obtain descriptive statistics for the four case study megacity regions using data from the fifth and sixth national censuses, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (PRC NSB, 2016), and each of the four megacity regions’ statistical yearbooks.To understand bottom-up dynamics, we visited urban, rural, and peri-urban areas of each of the cities to directly observe land use patterns. We interviewed key planning department staff, mayors, party secretaries, entrepreneurs, village leaders, and residents in each of the megacity regions. We did content analysis of plans and policy documents to further illuminate the quantitative findings at different scales. For Chengdu, we drew on interviews with key informants and ordinary residents conducted by one of the authors (LeGates) and a team from Renmin University. The other authors (Chen and Fang) and a research team from Tongji University gathered primary and secondary data, analyzed LandSat images, conducted interviews, and performed multiple site observations in Suzhou during 2015 and 2016 as part of a study of integrated urban–rural development for the Suzhou Division of the China Development Bank (Suzhou Division of China Development Bank & Tongji University, 2016).All of the four case study megacity regions’ coordinated urban–rural development programs share common objectives and have similar components, but the four megacity regions have developed distinct models of coordinated urban–rural development reflecting their stage of development, local conditions, and political culture. Understanding the reasons for and nature of these models is helpful in clarifying what coordinated urban–rural development is and as background for our conclusions and normative recommendations about how it might be tailored to local conditions.Development models in China’s most developed megacity regionsChina’s most developed megacity regions are particularly important to the study of coordinated urban–rural development for several reasons. They are closest to what urban China is likely to be like when it approaches full urbanization in the next decades. The most sophisticated planning and municipal administration occurs in these cities and other cities can learn from them. They are of particular interest to other developmental state countries looking for successful models of how coordination or integration of urban–rural development can help national goals.Shanghai: Municipal government–led top-down modelShanghai has a very high development level. It is China’s largest and most developed and prosperous large city: a center of finance, high-value-added manufacturing, and research and development (Zhang, LeGates, & Bao, 2016). It is the gateway to the Yangtze River Delta with a population of 24.2 million people (PRC NSB, 2016). One third of China’s exports flow from Shanghai’s port (PRC NSB, 2016).If Shanghai was a separate country, its entire city-region area including peri-urban and rural land in districts beyond the urban core would qualify as fully urbanized by Kingsley Davis (1965)—unlike Chengdu, Chongqing, and many other Chinese cities. It is near or at the last stage of Rostow’s (1960) development typology. It has a large capitalist and tiny subsistence sector. Almost all of its surplus labor, as described by the Lewis (1954) model, has been absorbed.The most important feature that has defined Shanghai’s coordinated urban–rural development model is that it has been fully urbanized for more than 30 years.3 Only 10% of its population is rural. Accordingly, it is in a fundamentally different position than less urban, less wealthy cities.Shanghai began implementing policies to coordinate urban and rural development in the mid-1980s but not under that name. The national government drew on Shanghai’s experience to articulate coordinated urban–rural development policy in the early 2000s. The model we describe in this section began in about 2000. Since then, the Shanghai municipal government has been able to make large, top-down investments in infrastructure and public services and provide transfer payments to rural residents on a scale impossible elsewhere in China or most cities in other developing countries. The municipality plans and supports large new projects in high-end manufacturing and also historic towns, resorts, parks, and centers of technological innovation. In addition, Shanghai provides funding for infrastructure and social services to improve the cities’ 104 subdistricts, 107 townships, two towns, and 1,593 villages (PRC NSB, 2016).The current stage of Shanghai’s coordinated urban–rural development—what we term the municipal government top-down model—started in about 2000 and continues today. Earlier, even before coordinated urban–rural development became national policy, Shanghai experienced substantial bottom-up endogenous coordinated urban–rural development and pioneered policies to consolidate land, industry, and housing—the “three concentrations policy”—that have been widely replicated in China. As Pudong succeeded as a world financial center and new industrial base, Shanghai’s own-source revenue increased, allowing the Shanghai government to greatly increase investment in human development in rural areas as well as economic development throughout Shanghai. Since 2000, the Shanghai local government has dominated the process of coordinated urban–rural development. Most of the projects developed in Shanghai peri-urban areas at the time of this writing in September 2017 are top-down programs led by the municipal government. Shanghai has also developed a decentralized urban system by developing new cities, towns, and districts so that rural laborers can more easily find nearby nonagricultural jobs in addition to jobs in town and village enterprises (TVEs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs; Den Hartog, 2010). Figure 2 illustrates Shanghai’s top-down municipal government coordinated urban–rural development model.From coordinated to integrated urban and rural development in China’s megacity regionsAll authorsChen Chen, Richard LeGates & Chenhao Fanghttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1413285Published online:11 January 2018Figure 2. Shanghai’s municipal government–led top-down coordinated urban–rural development model. Figure drawn by author.(Source: Chen Chen)Display full sizeFigure 2. Shanghai’s municipal government–led top-down coordinated urban–rural development model. Figure drawn by author.(Source: Chen Chen)Shanghai has invested in many human development areas—most notably environmental remediation and improvement, spatial equity, and livability. Shanghai is located at the mouth of the Yangtze River with a complex and fragile ecology. It is in a delta with low-lying land and many rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, and wetlands. It is an important flyway for migratory birds and spawning area for fish. Fishing and harvesting seafood are important industries. As Shanghai became aware of the environmental damage that industrialization in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s had done and the impact that the new development in Pudong was having on both urban and rural areas of Shanghai and to help close the growing gap between the core city and the rural hinterland, the Shanghai government has invested heavily in environmental remediation and has enforced increasingly stringent air and water quality standards—a significant departure from classic economic development-only development state goals. The Shanghai municipal government makes transfer payments to towns and villages to protect the environment and recently has funded extensive “beautiful countryside” programs to improve villages and promote rural tourism using a combination of national and municipal funds. New trees are being planted, polluted streams cleaned up, and coal-fired plants closed. A major new wildlife sanctuary and migratory bird preserve has been created on Shanghai’s Chongming Island in the mouth of the Yangtze River.Shanghai is also paying attention to equity in its development. Compensation for involuntary displacement of farmers is an important and conflictual issue in China. Instances of heavy-handed top-down taking of rural residents’ use rights in land and unfair compensation have been reported (X. Chen, 2012; Lora-Wainwright, 2012; O’Brien & Li, 2006). One of Shanghai’s most important policies since 2000, called the “three displacements” policy, addresses this issue by providing how residents of rural areas whom are displaced from their land are to be compensated for rights they lose as rural residents. The three rights are (a) arable land to farm; (b) homestead land for a house, garden plot, and ancillary household uses; and (c) a share in their village’s collective income. If a rural household is willing to give up all three rights, the Shanghai government will usually grant them a replacement house in an urban community, entitlement to urban-level social welfare, urban hukou, and other financial compensation. If the package is attractive enough, rural residents will voluntarily give up their rural hukou and accept urban hukou. Sometimes rural residents will trade some, but not all, of their rights as rural residents in exchange for lesser compensationShanghai has been quite successful in improving rural areas. A strength of its model is widely distributed, high-quality infrastructure and public services in rural areas. One weakness of the model is that its generous infrastructure and public services have propped up villages on the urban fringe quite far from the urban core that are costly to service and arguably should shrink. The size of Shanghai’s agricultural labor force has decreased and average per capita wages in rural areas have increased dramatically, as have sources of rural residents’ income (Chen et al., 2017). The ratio of urban to rural wages has decreased and is lower than China’s national average but is still 2.26:1 (PRC NSB, 2016). Shanghai has made only marginal progress in reducing the dual rural–urban income gap. This is because income in urban areas has risen almost as rapidly as income in rural areas (Chen et al., 2017).Shanghai’s model is most useful for wealthy, highly urbanized city regions. Capital cities in Asia and elsewhere in the developing world and large agglomerations that are well connected to the World City Network that still have significant rural land can benefit from Shanghai’s experience.Suzhou: Empowering the entrepreneurial township government modelSuzhou is a highly developed prefectural-level city in southern Jiangsu Province adjacent to Shanghai.4 China’s most important national economic development zone—a joint venture between China and Singapore initiated in 1994—and other very large economic zones with manufacturing and service economies are key features of Suzhou. Most of the developable land in Suzhou has been developed. At 75% urban, Suzhou is entering the flat part of Davis’s S-curve and the latter stages of Rostow’s drive to economic maturity stage. Similar to Shanghai, most of Suzhou’s surplus rural labor has been absorbed.The goals of Suzhou’s coordinated urban–rural development program are similar to coordinated urban–rural development goals in the other case study cities: concentrating people, land, and industry; providing better and more equalized social services; and building a more functional and beautiful new socialist countryside. Because of Suzhou’s massive economic development zones, it urbanized quickly in the 1990s and has significant city-level, own-source revenue to improve and equalize infrastructure (though less than Shanghai).Between 2003, when the central government announced that cities should coordinate urban and rural development, and 2008, Suzhou called their coordination efforts “coordinated urban–rural development” (cheng xiang tong chou), consistent with the national government terminology. However, in 2006, the national government began to encourage mature cities to experiment with integrated urban–rural development (cheng xian yi ti hua), and in 2008, Suzhou began experimenting with integrated urban–rural development. In 2014, the national government designated Suzhou China’s first, and so far only, national pilot region for integrated urban–rural development. Though this is noteworthy, it is premature to interpret this as a national shift in direction. The Suzhou pilot program is new and relatively small scale. The national government regularly funds experimental pilot projects, and not all are replicated (Xu, 2011). The jury is still out on the future of integrated urban–rural development as defined by Suzhou.The difference between coordinated and integrated urban–rural development is subtle. When Suzhou’s program name changed to integrated urban–rural development in 2008, the program’s goals changed to place greater emphasis on high standards of rural development, including natural/human environmental balance and livability, and the process by which Suzhou sought to achieve its goals changed to emphasize bottom-up entrepreneurship from the town and village level.The essential difference in Suzhou’s approach is that they shifted finances and responsibility for development decisions to much lower levels of government than elsewhere in China. This is consistent with developmental state practice in China, where decentralizing finances and responsibility have been used to unleash creativity and entrepreneurship. In Suzhou, decentralization of coordinated urban–rural development practice has gone deeper than anywhere else in China.The main device for empowering lower levels of government has been the redistribution of Suzhou’s land development quota. One of China’s local governments’ main revenue sources comes from the right to convert collectively owned arable land, which by law must remain agricultural, to government-owned land, which can be developed. When land is reclassified, its value almost always greatly increases because the supply of developable land is very small and demand very large. Governments and private investors anticipate future revenue streams as the land is developed. Because China has such a large population and such a small amount of arable land per capita, the national government is extremely sensitive to food security issues. How much land in China can be converted from agriculture each year is strictly controlled at the national level by China’s Ministry of Land and Resources. The Ministry of Land and Resources assigns annual land conversion quotas to provinces, which in turn divide their annual quota among lower levels of government. Most of China’s land conversion quotas stay above the level of county-level cities and city districts.Beginning in 2008, the Suzhou city government delegated responsibility for allocating a significant share of their land quota revenue to district and county-level city governments, granting them authority to distribute the revenue and authority to make development decisions still lower to the township level. Townships became the key players managing the urban–rural development process. For this reason, we term the most recent phase of Suzhou’s urban–rural development the empowering the entrepreneurial township government model.Rather than either impose top-down policies or leave the development process entirely to bottom-up initiative, the Suzhou model assumes that funding and empowering township governments and, under township governments’ direction, towns and villages will lead to desirable integration of city and countryside.5 Suzhou’s 55 townships now control a significant amount of Suzhou’s land conversion quota and have been assigned responsibility to provide infrastructure, housing, and other public services. The townships work closely with Suzhou’s six districts, four county-level cities, and 1,039 administrative villages to make development decisions, which are funded largely from land quota funds, supplemented by other city and district funds, revenue from township-owned collective companies, other town and village own-source revenue, and money from private investors in public–private partnerships.Returns from development do not occur immediately. Financial institutions are reluctant to loan money directly to township governments because most have substantial debt and the loans are considered too risky. But they are willing to loan money to townships if county-level city governments give them land development quotas and act as guarantors. As land is successfully developed, governments and investors get growing, long-term revenue streams. If investors believe that the projects will succeed, they will be willing to risk lending money in anticipation of future income.In the Suzhou model, the Suzhou municipal government itself established the policy framework for the entire Suzhou city-region. County-level cities and districts made policy, provided fiscal support, loaned money, and acted as guarantors, making it possible for township governments to obtain development funding from financial institutions on favorable terms. Township governments are the primary implementing parties—working on projects with towns and villages. Villages themselves coordinate village-level development. Under this decentralized framework, the municipal government also encourages lower levels of government to use their rent and tax income to make investments that will yield long-term investment income. For housing and industrial park projects, township governments provide most of the investment themselves; for other projects, investments are shared among levels of governments.Suzhou’s integrated urban–rural development concept is conceptually similar to the idea of China’s household responsibility system that revolutionized Chinese agriculture in the mid-1980s. Under the household responsibility system, farm households, rather than village collectives, were made responsible for household-level decisions about agricultural production and were allowed to keep any surplus beyond government-mandated quotas. This unleashed bottom-up endogenous entrepreneurship among farmers and agricultural yields grew dramatically. The integrated urban–rural development parallel is that by making low levels of government—townships, towns, and villages—responsible for development decisions and giving them resources to carry out projects, Suzhou will unleash better and more responsible development. If successful, low levels of government will capture revenue beyond amounts shared with higher levels of government in the same way that entrepreneurial farm households’ income increased under the household responsibility system. Figure 3 illustrates the Suzhou empowering the entrepreneurial township government model.From coordinated to integrated urban and rural development in China’s megacity regionsAll authorsChen Chen, Richard LeGates & Chenhao Fanghttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1413285Published online:11 January 2018Figure 3. Suzhou’s empowering the entrepreneurial township model.Display full sizeFigure 3. Suzhou’s empowering the entrepreneurial township model.Positive outcomes of Suzhou’s model have been to place decision-making responsibility closer to the grassroots with the expectation that local leaders will identify development potential and manage development better than higher levels of government and, because they are held accountable for outcomes and will benefit if the development succeeds, will work hard to achieve success. To get more income from rents and taxes and more land transfer fees, townships and collectives have to develop land. To attract investments, they have to provide good infrastructure and get enough land development quotas. In this virtuous cycle, all participants—including municipal government, township government, rural collectives, and the private sector—become part of pro-growth coalitions.This is similar to Harvey Molotch’s concept of municipal “growth machines” (Molotch, 1976) in which a combination of government and private business interests that consider economic growth the most important local imperative dominate local government decision making in the United States. A negative effect of this decentralization is that town- and village-level growth machines may pay less attention to environmental and other human developmental goals than higher levels of government.Another important negative side effect of decentralizing development decision making, land conversion quotas, and revenue has been significant sprawl. Figure 4 shows the increase in sprawl in Suzhou between 1998 and 2008, before they began to pursue integrated urban–rural development and between 2008 and 2014 after the reform. Sprawl increased rapidly after the beginning of integrated urban–rural development.From coordinated to integrated urban and rural development in China’s megacity regionsAll authorsChen Chen, Richard LeGates & Chenhao Fanghttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1413285Published online:11 January 2018Figure 4. Sprawl in Suzhou municipality 1998–2014. Maps for 1988 and 2008 are from the Comprehensive Plan of Suzhou; the map for 2014 was drawn by Chen Chen based on Landsat 7 and 8 images.Display full sizeFigure 4. Sprawl in Suzhou municipality 1998–2014. Maps for 1988 and 2008 are from the Comprehensive Plan of Suzhou; the map for 2014 was drawn by Chen Chen based on Landsat 7 and 8 images.Suzhou—particularly southern Suzhou—has rich, water-related natural resources: lakes, streams, ponds, and wetlands. These provide the economic base for aquiculture and are a tourist resource. The urban sprawl has been accompanied by environmental degradation: the disappearance of cultivated land, woodland, wetlands, and open space. Economic development is taking a toll on Suzhou’s historical heritage, food security, traditional rural communities, and environmental quality of life. To partially offset the negative impacts of sprawl, Suzhou’s current general plan places much of southern Suzhou into environmentally protected areas that will not be developed (Wu, 2015). Despite its economic success, Suzhou government debt is excessive, as in many poorer Chinese cities.Development models in less developed megacity regionsShanghai and Suzhou are prosperous Chinese cities, more developed than most other cities in China or most cites in the developing world. How do their coordinated urban–rural development policies contrast with policies in China’s less developed megacities? For answers to this question we turn to case studies of Chengdu and Chongqing in western China.Chengdu: Negotiation modelChengdu has a moderate development level. It is the capital of Szechuan Province, the leading city in southwestern China. Chengdu made coordinated urban–rural development a centerpiece of its development strategy beginning in 2003, and in 2007, it was designated one of two national pilot regions for coordinated urban rural development. Chengdu’s coordinated urban–rural development model is the most comprehensive of any Chinese city (Ye & LeGates, 2013; Ye, LeGates, & Qin, 2013) (as in Figure 5). Chengdu’s size, history, culture, arable land, geography, development stage, and political culture are quite different from those of Shanghai and the other case study cities and its coordinated urban–rural development program reflects these differences.Chengdu has a large administrative boundary—14,312 km2, more than double Shanghai’s 6,340 km2. It includes portions of the Chengdu plain—an inland delta with rich soil and abundant water from the Tibetan plateau that has supported a large rural population living in small villages called linpans for more than 2 millennia (Abramson & Qi, 2011; Ye & LeGates, 2013; Ye et al., 2013). The topography of Chengdu, the rest of the Chengdu plain, and Chongqing are illustrated in Figure 6. Chengdu’s linpans are small—often with fewer than 100 residents living in detached units or attached two- or three-story single-family houses. They are environmentally attractive—often surrounded by bamboo and a de facto greenbelt of agricultural land.From coordinated to integrated urban and rural development in China’s megacity regionsAll authorsChen Chen, Richard LeGates & Chenhao Fanghttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1413285Published online:11 January 2018Figure 5. Rendering of a new village in Chengdu in the linpan style.Display full sizeFigure 5. Rendering of a new village in Chengdu in the linpan style.From coordinated to integrated urban and rural development in China’s megacity regionsAll authorsChen Chen, Richard LeGates & Chenhao Fanghttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1413285Published online:11 January 2018Figure 6. Topographical map of Chengdu and Chonqing. Photo of Chengdu municipal government rendering by Richard LeGates. Drawn by authors from a Google map.Display full sizeFigure 6. Topographical map of Chengdu and Chonqing. Photo of Chengdu municipal government rendering by Richard LeGates. Drawn by authors from a Google map.Chengdu was only 55% urban when it was designated a national pilot region for coordinated urban–rural development in 2007. Its economy is much less developed than Shanghai’s or Suzhou’s. Chengdu does not have sufficient municipal revenue to provide infrastructure and public services to rural areas at Shanghai’s level. Even though Chengdu has thriving economic zones, they are not large or decentralized enough to provide enough nonagricultural jobs. Bottom-up dynamics—rural collective economies, TVEs, and SMEs—in Chengdu are not as strong as in Shanghai or Suzhou. For these reasons, many policy initiatives and programs that proved to be effective in Shanghai and Suzhou could not be replicated in Chengdu. Chengdu’s coordinated urban–rural development model is characterized by its accomplishments in improving human settlements in rural areas and its comprehensive rural cadastral system mapping use rights in rural land (Ye & LeGates, 2013; Ye et al., 2013). Particularly notable is the bottom-up political process that Chengdu pursued in its coordinated urban–rural development program (Ye & LeGates, 2013; Ye et al., 2013). For that reason, we refer to Chengdu’s model as a negotiation model.Because Chengdu does not have Shanghai’s or Suzhou’s resources to pay the full cost of housing and other benefits for resettling rural residents, they have devoted a great deal of effort to regularizing use rights in land and encouraging lower levels of government to experiment with transfer of development rights. Land values in Suzhou and Shanghai are high enough that when collectively owned agricultural land is converted to developable state-owned land, the increment in value is often enough to cover most or all of the cost of replacement housing in a consolidated new community and other benefits. In Chengdu, the value of agricultural land in hinterland villages is relatively low; closer to large towns, small cities, and county seats, it is much higher. By permitting a rural village to swap some relatively low-value land near the village for higher value land near an urban area that can be developed, Chengdu permitted many villages to generate revenue. It effectively shared some of its land conversion quota with rural areas.In Shanghai and Suzhou, the development process is mostly driven by municipal or township government (working with rural collectives and the private sector), because government (often in public–private partnerships) can provide enough funds to relocate communities. In Chengdu, where the land values are not high enough to cover full construction costs, rural residents themselves had to be included in deciding coordinated urban–rural development strategies involving sensitive restructuring of use rights. Achieving consensus on land use rights, providing households with parcel maps and documents confirming their use rights to more than 5 million land parcels, and establishing a commodity exchange for trading agricultural use rights were centerpieces of Chengdu’s strategy (Ye & LeGates, 2013; Ye et al., 2013).Including rural residents in the decision-making process made the Chengdu equivalent of the three concentrations policy move much slower than it did in Shanghai and Suzhou. But participation of villagers in the development process achieved their buy-in and produced a built environment reflecting local values. Villagers often wanted to live in small villages similar to linpans. As a result, hundreds of new villages at a human scale similar to linpans, but larger and denser, were built with a few hundred to a few thousand residents mostly living in attractive attached row housing surrounded by agricultural land. Residents of the new villages often pool collective village agricultural land, which is then leased for 30 years to large, modern agricultural enterprises. This is a good illustration of both human/natural environment goals of China’s new style developmental state policy and its quality of life goals. In addition to a greenbelt surrounding the core districts of Chengdu, the new villages that Chengdu built mimic the most attractive features of traditional linpan villages, often including a bamboo greenbelt around the village. Chengdu’s regional plan provided that each village must have 16 public services to improve the quality of life in the village including a kindergarten, library, medical clinic, and trash collection facility. Villages typically have public open space and public recreation facilities and an attractive design that brings green space into the village itself.The Chengdu model provides an exceptional example of how to retain a large rural population in a beautiful, new countryside. It is most appropriate for areas of China and other developing countries with good and well-watered soil, productive agriculture, and well-developed village institutions. It will not work in poorer areas, areas lacking good arable land, or areas where mountains separate settlements or dense urban areas.It is not an appropriate model for integrated urban–rural development in mature city-regions such as Shanghai and Suzhou, where virtually all land values are high and there is only a small agricultural workforce.The Chengdu model will work best in cities or regions with high-quality land and many scattered villages. In other regions with high agricultural quality, the size, distribution, and many design features of the new settlements that Chengdu has built with attractive attributes of the linpan villages are good models.Chongqing: Labor transfer modelChongqing has a low to moderate development level. It is a huge, provincial-level city in western China at the top of the navigable part of the Yangtze River, 1,500 miles from the mouth of the Yangtze River in Shanghai as the crow flies and 325 miles southeast of Chengdu separated by the Chengdu Plain in Sichuan Province.Chongqing was created from part of Sichuan Province in 1977. About 10% of Chongqing’s population of 95.7 million is concentrated in the core city alongside the Yangtze River; the remaining 90% live in 38 subdivisions consisting of 26 districts, eight counties, and four autonomous counties (including 204 subdistricts, 611 townships, 193 towns, 14 ethnic towns, and 8,220 villages). Chongqing’s coordinated urban–rural development model responds to a number of geographical realities. Chongqing is enormous—31,776 square miles, 12 times the land area of Shanghai. Different areas of Chongqing are separated by mountains, and many towns and villages are isolated. Even the core city itself is built on steep hills rising from the Yangtze River. Much of Chongqing’s land is unproductive or marginal for agriculture. As a result, Chongqing has many isolated settlements, a large surplus rural labor supply, and much lower average income than Shanghai, Suzhou, or Chengdu.Figure 6 illustrates the geographical differences between Chengdu and Chongqing. It shows that Chengdu is part of an inland delta. Water from the edge of the Tibetan Plateau to the west provides abundant water to rich soil to the east of the core city, deposited over millennia. This makes a settlement pattern with many small farming settlements possible. Figure 6 shows that mountains rather than rich farmland cover most of Chongqing, which makes farming difficult or impossible and provision of infrastructure and services costly. This is why Chongqing emphasizes transferring the surplus labor force from remote and mountainous areas to the core city and other more accessible urban areas and encouraging the surplus rural population of these areas to outmigrate to other provinces.When Chongqing started to aggressively promote coordinated urban–rural development in 2007, it had the least developed economy, lowest urbanization level (48%), lowest per capita GDP, and poorest rural communities of any of the four case study megacity regions. More of its population had outmigrated than any of the other four case study megacity regions. It fell in the middle of Kingsley Davis’s (1965) S-curve—well below the 75 to 85% level where the curve flattens and urbanization slows or stops. Parts of rural Chongqing come closest of any of the four case study megacity regions to a subsistence economy as described by Arthur O. Lewis (1954). Implementing a coordinated urban–rural development policy like Shanghai’s or Suzhou’s to provide equalized infrastructure, public services, and social welfare to urban and rural areas was impossible in Chongqing.Despite its challenges, Chongqing has been developing rapidly. By the early 2000s, it was well into Rostow’s “takeoff” stage of development. Chongqing has a number of comparative advantages. Its strategic position on the upper Yangtze River with the world’s largest volume of river traffic and vast economic catchment is very important. It has easier access to markets in western China than cities on China’s east coast and the potential to develop into a major logistics hub in the “belt” to western China, Central Asia, and ultimately Europe as China’s “One Belt and One Road” program progresses. Chongqing is developing rapidly as large original equipment manufacturing firms in the most developed parts of eastern China with the highest land and labor costs relocate to take advantage of lower labor and land costs and the rapidly growing domestic market in western China. Increasing numbers of high-value-added firms are establishing branches or relocating to Chongqing’s economic development zones.Chongqing’s coordinated urban–rural development model has a number of unique features. The central feature of Chongqing’s approach is transferring a significant workforce from rural to urban areas, particularly in large new residential districts in the core of Chongqing city. Chongqing’s economy is not able to generate enough revenue to fund incentives to induce many rural residents to give up their de jure rights to rural collective agricultural and homestead land and a share of village cooperative income as rural hukou holders. Accordingly, unlike the three displacements policy implemented in Shanghai and Suzhou that sought to compensate rural residents for entirely relinquishing their use rights in rural land, Chongqing’s approach was to generally allow rural hukou holders to change their hukou status to urban hukou without giving up their rights in rural collectives (use rights to arable land, a homestead, and a share of rural collectives’ profits).Chongqing is building the foundation for better social welfare but currently lacks funds for an adequate system. Its endowment insurance now covers 100% of urban and rural residents. However, its payment standard is only equivalent to one ninth of Shanghai’s standard. Chongqing is not promoting the aggregation of rural arable lands as aggressively as the other three case study megacity regions because the topography illustrated in Figure 6 makes much of the land unsuitable for mechanized agriculture.Local governments in Chongqing have stressed a job search information system, vocational training, and improved unemployment insurance to help the agricultural labor force transfer to the core city of Chongqing for nonagricultural job opportunities. The core city of Chongqing has built many large-scale social housing projects to accommodate rural migrants. It costs less to provide public services to residents of urban communities there than in isolated rural areas.Chongqing has also encouraged outmigration. Outmigrants typically earn significantly higher salaries than they would in Chongqing. Their remittances significantly increase the living standard of remaining household members—particularly in rural communities. When outmigrants return home, some are well equipped with capital and skills that allow them to start their own businesses.A strength of Chongqing’s model is that it has succeeded in rapidly absorbing a large surplus rural population—a central prerequisite to development according to Arthur O. Lewis (1954). Chongqing has succeeded in stimulating outmigration that provides opportunities to migrants and generates remittances. Weaknesses of Chongqing’s model are the growth of large, new poor residential areas in the core city and a lag in development of rural areas. Because Chongqing has heavily emphasized strategies to encourage relocation of its labor force, we term their coordinated urban–rural development model the labor transfer model.The Chongqing model should work best in areas with very uneven development and where settlements are widely separated by mountains or other geographical features. It will only work in areas with enough revenue to subsidize relocation. Table 2 summarizes the information in the above discussion of the four models.From coordinated to integrated urban and rural development in China’s megacity regionsAll authorsChen Chen, Richard LeGates & Chenhao Fanghttps://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1413285Published online:11 January 2018Table 2. Four models of coordinated urban–rural development in China.CSVDisplay Table ConclusionReturning to the ideas of Arthur O. Lewis, Kingsley Davis, and Walt Whitman Rostow; classic notions of the development state proposed by Chalmers Johnson; and the concept of the human development state described by John Knight, Chenggang Xu, and others, what is the theoretical significance of our findings to scholars and practitioners in China, developing countries in Asia, and worldwide?The classic models still have great explanatory power. Some core ideas are as relevant today as they were when they were proposed. But in the Chinese megacity regions we studied, some aspects of the models no longer apply.Arthur O. Lewis’s concept of dual economies has proven mostly correct. An enormous divide exists between urban and rural China. Average incomes in urban China are almost triple average incomes in rural areas (PRC BNS, 2016). Lewis’s concept that absorption of surplus rural labor is essential to modernization was also prescient. China’s unprecedented rural–urban migration is a major contributing factor to its economic success. On the other hand, some of Lewis’s concepts no long apply to China. The distinction between a subsistence and a capitalist sector is clearly wrong. The economy of rural China is well above the subsistence level virtually everywhere. It is not true that rural areas were unable to accumulate capital. At least in China, Lewis was wrong about the power of endogenous development. Whether this is a peculiar characteristic of Chinese culture, where households tend to have high saving rates and many are quite entrepreneurial, or a more universal phenomenon remains to be explored. Lewis’s view that employers in the capitalist sector would pay only a modest premium for labor as a traditional society modernized is not true in China today. Urban employers pay a substantial premium even for unskilled labor in regions with strong economies. These findings are important for China, where many scholarly articles still repeat Lewis’s dated views and some policymakers continue to make flawed policy based on theoretical assumptions that are not true. Critical reexamination of Lewis’s theory and application of empirically verified new theory are equally important in other developing regions of the world.Rostow’s stages of growth model also remains relevant. But his categories no longer fit Chinese reality and, by extension, conditions in other development countries. Since 1978, the most developed regions of China have, in fact, proceeded through a series of stages that approximate the move from traditional society through takeoff to a high mass consumption society. In China’s case, it is essential to distinguish among different regions. Much of rural Xinjiang Province, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia still resemble Rostow’s traditional society stage, whereas large areas of Shanghai and Suzhou are already at the stage of high mass consumption. Research in other large developing countries such as India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, and Nigeria might well show the same thing. After 50+ years, Rostow’s theory appears Europe and North America centric and deterministic. Different parts of China have passed through Rostow’s stages at different times and in different ways than he describes. New technology—particularly transportation and communications technology—and the emergence of a globally integrated economy altered the way in which modernization occurred in China and by implication the same is true in other countries.China’s economic success represents an important counterweight to Rostow’s assumption that neoliberal capitalist states are always the best political/economic system to promote development, always superior to developmental states. Rostow’s stages of growth theory is still widely taught and rigid application of the theory can produce bad policy decisions. Our findings can help correct this situation and will hopefully stimulate research in other countries that can help update Rostow’s powerful and useful theory.Kingsley Davis’s (1965) S-curve still has enormous explanatory power. Davis was correct that urbanization tends to follow an attenuated S-curve. His conceptualization of a “family” of S-curves is still powerful today. But China’s S-curve is unlike any other. It started later and has proceeded more rapidly than S-curves of most other countries. In the last 35 years, China’s urbanization rate has increased about as much as the U.S. urbanization rate did in the 100 years between 1840 and 1940. The Chinese government’s National New-Style Urbanization Plan (2014–2020) (PRC, 2014) states that urbanization is a “law” of development and that China must urbanize to develop. We agree that urbanization and development are related. But we believe the Chinese government has confused cause and effect. Urbanization creates the precondition for development; it does not cause it. Urging different regions of China to urbanize as fast as possible in the mistaken belief that if they do, development will naturally follow is wrong-headed.Finally, throughout this article, we have expressed a belief that the human developmental state model can often be a useful model for urbanization and development. We have also argued that coordinating urban and rural development is good in principle and that many of China’s policies should help guide other developing countries with some form of human developmental state.Unlike the United States and other countries with neoliberal regimes that rely on the market to adjust economic relations and where there is little explicit national-level planning, the Chinese national government views state coordination to adjust economic, spatial, and social relationships as an appropriate and important role and strongly influences spatial planning by lower levels of government. In China, strong government intervention to promote economic development by subnational public and private actors, despite many problems and failures, overall has succeeded to a degree unparalleled in human history. Coordinated urban–rural development has been an important component of the model for 14 years and has achieved significant success. Countries with strong developmental state governments elsewhere in Asia may borrow ideas from the Chinese models.The classic economic-development-above-all-else developmental state model is outdated. Countries at moderate levels of development can now afford to pursue human development as well as economic development goals. Their citizens deserve a quality natural/built environment, livable cities, and culture as well as efficient economies that provide jobs and generate increased GDP. To compete globally for creative class workers to staff high-value-added advanced economic activities, environmental and human development goals are essential. Top-down government programs to coordinate development to make cities more just, livable, sustainable, and carbon neutral can be an important component of state policy. China’s National New Style National Urbanization Plan (PRC, 2014), the United Nations Agenda 2030 (United Nations, 2015a) and their most recent Human Development Report (United Nations, 2016) are good starting points for articulating human development goals and many plans and policies that China has pioneered in the coordinated and integrated urban–rural development experiments operationalize the UN goals. Scholars and policymakers worldwide can benefit from understanding the initial steps that China is now making to incorporate human development goals at every level.Table 1. Characteristics of the four case megacity regions.Megacity regionShanghaiSuzhouChengduChongqingAdministrative rankProvincial levelPrefecture levelPrefecture levelProvincial levelSubordinate administrative units16 districts (including 104 subdistricts, 107 townships, two towns, 1,593 villages)Six districts, four county-level cities (including 40 subdistricts, 55 townships, 1,039 villages)11 districts, four counties, five county-level cities (including 113 subdistricts, 181 townships, 23 towns, 1,911 villages)26 districts, eight counties, four autonomous counties (including 204 subdistricts, 611 townships, 193 towns, 14 ethnic towns, 8,220 villages)Administrative area (km2)6,3408,48814,31282,400Population (millions)24.210.615.830.5Urbanization rate (%)89.075.070.362.6Urban–rural income ratio2.261.961.932.56GDP (million $)398,060223,188176,300254,400Per capita GDP ($)16,46421,01410,8508,717Note. Statistical yearbooks for each city in 2016.Table 2. Four models of coordinated urban–rural development in China.Megacity regionShanghaiSuzhouChengduChongqingDevelopment levelVery highHighModerateLow/moderateModel nameMunicipal government top-down modelEmpowering the entrepreneurial town government modelNegotiation modelLabor transfer modelYear current model began and latest revisionMid-1980s/20002008/20142003/20072003/2007TypeCoordinated urban–rural developmentIntegrated urban–rural developmentCoordinated urban–rural developmentCoordinated urban–rural developmentKey featuresWorld finance centerLarge economic development zonesSmall linpan villages on rich agricultural landLarge mountainous area Early and high urbanizationRural industrialization Few large parcels  Fragile environment Limited good agricultural landKey policiesTop-down development projects and tight regulation on rural developmentFiscal decentralization to town levelClear land use rightsGrassroots decision makingConcentrating populationEncouraging outmigrationStrengthsStrong top-down planningEntrepreneurialismClear land titlesRapid absorption of surplus rural labor Good rural infrastructure and public servicesGrassroots decision makingCitizen participationOutmigration from poor areas Environmental remediation   WeaknessesLack of bottom-up dynamicsSprawlEnvironmental degradationExcessive debtDense new urban poor areas Props up marginal remote villagesExcessive debt Development lag in rural areasMost useful forWealthy, highly urbanized city regionsDeveloped regions with strong local governmentRich agricultural regions with scattered villagesLarge regionUneven developmentAcknowledgmentsThe authors thank Tongji Professor Zhao Min and Renmin University of China Professors Ye Yumin and Qin Bo for their many insights about coordinated urban–rural development.Additional informationFundingThis research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51608366), Shanghai Pujiang Program (Grant No. 16PJC085).Notes on contributorsChen ChenChen Chen’s main research interests focus on urbanization, coordinated urban–rural development, peri-urbanization, and urban economics.Richard LeGatesRichard LeGates’s research interests mainly focus on urbanization, coordinated urban rural development, Asian peri-urbanization, and peri-urban planning.Chenhao FangChenhao Fang’s research interest mainly focus on coordinated urban–rural development and urban economics.Notes1. To achieve these national government goals the pilot regions developed and other Chinese cities have since replicated, policies to (a) upgrade peri-urban and rural transportation, water, power, and other infrastructure to be comparable to infrastructure in the core urban area; (b) equalize education, health, pension, and other social benefits between urban and rural residents (but not migrants without local hukou); (c) reform hukou, making it easier for residents with nonagricultural hukou to obtain urban hukou or abolishing the distinction between urban and rural hukou for residents altogether (but not for migrants without local hukou); (d) improve housing, infrastructure, education, health, social services, and cultural opportunities to create a “new socialist countryside” and, more recently, a “beautiful countryside” in villages and rural areas;They developed ancillary policies that may contribute to coordinated urban–rural development, including (a) top-down regional planning for their core, peri-urban, and rural areas; (b) clarifying households’ use rights in collective arable land; (c) assembling large agricultural parcels by encouraging pooling of arable lands held by individuals; (d) modernizing agriculture through scientific farming, technology, marketing, and branding; (e) demolishing scattered housing in rural homesteads and low-density villages and rehousing residents in more compact settlements; (f) rationalizing industrial zones by closing or relocating inefficient state-owned enterprises, upgrading infrastructure, improving logistics, and creating industry clusters; (g) rationalizing TVEs and SMEs; (h) promoting more participatory decision making at the village level.2. There are four levels of administrative divisions in China. All Chinese cities are all assigned a rank: (a) at the top level, four cities have the same status as provinces. Shanghai and Chongqing are two of the four (the others are Beijing and Tianjin); (b) at the second level, 288 cities have the rank of prefectures: prefecture-level cities (Chengdu and Suzhou are prefectural-level cities); (c) at the third level, there are 361 county-level cities, 897 prefectural city districts, 1,425 counties, 2,854 county-level divisions, and 117 ethnic autonomous counties; (d) at the fourth level, there are 12,282 townships and 20,401 towns (PRC NSB, 2016).3. In 1987, Shanghai’s official urbanization rate was 92.8%; in 2010, it was 89%; and in 2015, it was 89% according to the fifth and sixth national censuses and data from the 2016 Shanghai Statistical Yearbook (PRC NSB, 2016). These variations reflect changing census definitions, migration, redistribution of the population within the Shanghai metropolitan region and other factors.4. Suzhou consists of the core city of Suzhou itself, four county-level cities (Changshu, Zhangjia Gang, Taicang, and Kunshan), and six districts (Wuzhong, Wujiang, Xiangcheng, Gusu, Huqiu, Industrial Park, and Hightech Park). In addition to the six districts, its administrative area includes four county-level cities with 40 subdistricts, 55 townships, and 1,039 administrative villages.5. According to University of Hong Kong professor Chenggang Xu:There are many reasons why it is important to let local governments initiate and coordinate local experiments. 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