Urban renewal as policy innovation in China: From growth stimulation to sustainable development
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| Author | Lin Ye,Xiangeng Peng,Laura Quadros Aniche,Peter H. T. Scholten,Elena Marie Ensenado |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1903 |
Received: 26 April 2020
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Revised: 28 December 2020
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Accepted: 23 February 2021
DOI: 10.1002/pad.1903
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE
Urban renewal as policy innovation in China: From growth
stimulation to sustainable development
Lin Ye
1
|Xiangeng Peng
2
|Laura Quadros Aniche
3
|Peter H. T. Scholten
3
|
Elena Marie Ensenado
3
1
Center for Chinese Public Administration
Research, School of Government, Sun Yat‐sen
University, Guangzhou, China
2
School of Government, Sun Yat‐sen
University, Guangzhou, China
3
Institute for Housing and Urban Development
Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Correspondence
Lin Ye, Center for Chinese Public
Administration Research, School of
Government, Sun Yat‐sen University,
Guangzhou 510275, China.
Email: ylljc@hotmail.com
Funding information
National Natural Science Foundation of China,
Grant/Award Number: 71673111; Ministry of
Education Social Science Key Research Center
Major Project, Grant/Award Number:
16JJD630013&16JJD630012
Abstract
A major policy innovation in China, urban renewal creates an opportunity to pro-
mote sustainable inner‐city development and to foster economic growth in an
environmentally and culturally sound way, which demands a close investigation of
its context, internal and external dynamics, and policy features. Property‐led
redevelopment dominated China's urban renewal since the early 1990s, as a
result of the market reform and political decentralization. Recently, it has become
important to meet the interests of local communities and the diverse stakeholders
in the effort to preserve the urban history and cultural fabric of cities. Contextual
factors in urban renewal policy and its innovation are investigated by analyzing a
pioneering case in Guangzhou from a longitudinal study approach. The impact of the
structural‐instrumental, cultural‐institutional, and environmental perspective on
policy innovation with the change of contextual factors that transformed the
development ideology and the managerial practice are identified to provide a new
angle of studying policy innovation in the urban field.
KEYWORDS
context, policy innovation, sustainability, urban renewal
1
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TRANSFORMATIVE URBAN RENEWAL AS A
PUBLIC POLICY INNOVATION: THE PERSPECTIVE
OF CONTEXT THEORY
Sustainable use and management of natural and socio‐economic re-
sources is becoming one of the major challenges worldwide. In this
light, cities have rediscovered the importance of their inner centers.
Instead of applying an urban sprawl development strategy, areas
within the city center have been subject the focus of strategic
redevelopment and repurposing. Inner city renewal can entail pro-
vision of public spaces, mixed land uses, mobility enhancement, effi-
cient consumption, and locally tailored solutions that harbor
opportunities for socio‐economic development, equal access to re-
sources, and a sustainable environment.
In attempts to establish an appropriate approach to studying the
transformative policy of urban renewal, the emergence of new roles
and new interactions between public, private, and community parties
and the shifting modes of governance can provide insights in how a
complex public policy such as urban renewal operates in a certain
political and governance setting.
The study of innovation in the public sector started in the 1960s,
focusing on the creation, adoption, diffusion, and organization of
public programs and policies (Burns & Stalker, 1961; Walker, 1969).
Since then, the research on innovation has covered a wide range of
topics from “studying policy innovation as a general trait to studying
the patterns of diffusion on single policies or, in particular, explaining
cumulative patterns of adoption” until “Berry and Berry's (1990)
introduction of EHA revolutionized and revitalized the field, allowing
scholars to simultaneously account for internal and external de-
terminants of policy innovation” (Boehmke & Skinner, 2012,
pp. 304–305). Many of the policy innovation and diffusion studies in
the late 20th century used American states as a laboratory, covering
Public Admin Dev. 2021;41:23–33. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pad © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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