Governing Resilience Planning

Governing Resilience Planning: Organizational Structures, Institutional Rules, and Fiscal Incentives in Guangzhou

Meng, Meng (South China University of Technology; State Key Laboratory of Subtropical Building Science)
Dabrowski, M.M. (TU Delft Spatial Planning and Strategy)
Stead, D. (TU Delft Spatial Planning and Strategy)

2023

Researchers and policymakers have long called for a collaborative governance process for climate adaptation and flood resilience. However, this is usually challenging when urban planning is supposed to be integrated with water management. Using the Chinese city of Guangzhou as a case study, this study explores the long-term disadvantaged conditions of urban planning in flood governance and how this situation is shaped. The findings show that, in comparison to the increasingly dominant position of water management in flood affairs, the urban planning system has had weak powers, limited legitimate opportunities, and insufficient fiscal incentives from the 2000s to the late 2010s. Those conditions have been shaped by organizational structures, institutional rules, and financial allocation in urban governance, whose changes did not bring benefits to urban planning. The emergence of the Sponge City Program in China in 2017 and its implementation at the municipal level is deemed to be a new start for urban planning, considering the encouragement of nature-based solutions and regulatory tools in land use for flood resilience. Even so, the future of this program is still full of challenges and more efforts are needed.

water management
urban planning
flood governance
climate adaptation
urban resilience

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:325d0186-b9c0-4141-a3cc-c18b3f8d987f

https://doi.org/10.3390/land12020417

2073-445X

Land, 12 (2)

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2023 Meng Meng, M.M. Dabrowski, D. Stead