Master Planning under Urban-Rural Integration: The Case of Nanjing, China

Urban-rural integration has become the macro policy in China to narrow the gap between urban and rural development. Meanwhile, the rapid pace of economic growth and urbanisation has increasingly posed challenges to urban areas over land availability and provision of infrastructure and labour. Policymakers have started to search for a more sustainable development mode to improve urban competitiveness. Against this context, urban master planning has started to adopt urban-rural integration as a core principle and extend its spatial coverage to rural areas. Through the case of Nanjing, this article investigates the practice and delivery of the 2008 planning reforms that enhanced city-regions as a spatial context for planning and assesses whether the new integrative plan achieves the objective of sustainable urban development. © 2012 Copyright Editorial Board, Urban Policy and Research.