Planning and Designing of Small Towns in Underdeveloped Areas from Perspective of Ecocivilization——A Case Study of Shuinan Town,Jishui County,Jiangxi Province

Small towns are important carriers of rural economy development, and center promoting rural advancement in a specific region. However, many environ- mental problems are emerging with rapid urbanization and expansion of small town scale. The research analyzed existing problems of small town planning and con- struction domestically in the context of the 18th Party Congress and proposed coun- termeasures in terms of scale prediction, intensive use of lands, ＂pastoral＂ land- scape pattern, protection and up-gradation of human ecology with a case study of Shuinan Town, Jishui County, Jiangxi Province.

Anyang:A Case Study of Foreign University Involvement in Chinese Sustainable New Town Planning

Over the last ten to fifteen years,planning and design professionals in the United States and Europe have increasingly been engaged in consulting work in China.Major Architectural & Engineering firms from the United Kingdom and the United States,for example,have been opening offices in Beijing and Shanghai.Recently,the concern with sustainable urban development and China's policies to alleviate pressures of urbanization has been an engine for commissions for new town plans and city expansion plans across China's provinces.During the 2007-2009 academic years,the School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati prepared a conceptual plan for the expansion of the City of Anyang through a collaborative agreement between the city and it.The experience of the faculty leading this project with field work,the planning process,plan preparation,and the engagement of students has revealed some important issues that need to be addressed by planning schools and planning professionals engaged in planning in provincial China.Thus,this paper is a case study of foreign university involvement in Chinese sustainable new town planning,and the following sections discuss the Anyang Eastern New Town Conceptual Plan,identify the key issues regarding preparing the plan,contracting and payment,data availability,data sharing and field investigation,and finally discuss the lessons learned regarding the planning process,project program and expectations.

Exploration and Reflection on the Village and Town Planning of Chengdu in the Context of Urban-Rural Coordination

This article starts from analyzing existing problems in China's village and town planning, and moves on to look at Chengdu's village and town planning from such aspects as institution management, compilation methods, and implementation mechanism in the context of urban-rural coordination in recent years. In doing so, the article aims to uncover the characteristics and modes of Chengdu's practices and their implications for future village and town planning.

Strengthening of the Territorial Position of Valladolid through Planning Strategies： Networks, Patterns and Centralities

The urban condition of the European territory requires new approaches to explain the current development of cities and to propose new planning tools. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that we can support an innovative perspective based on intermediate geographical scales, more useful for outlining the specific features of territory. While we analyze the territory, we should overcome the strictly local scale of the administrative boundaries and create new relationship between contemporary urban concepts （metropolization of territory and metapolis） and the regional ecological patterns. In the case of Valladolid （E） urban/metropolitan area, we focus on both causes and process of city growth. We have understood that it could be inefficient for planning forgetting the real spatial configuration （the city is located in an intersection between two territorial corridors） and misunderstanding the territorial role of the city at different scales （the double centrality in the emerging urban area and in the region）. The significance of this case is to reveal the inter-scalar condition of places as generators of constraints in the contemporary urban fabric and, at the same time, to show the quality and the potential of places in the future urban realm.

Solidified Branding Function: How the Urban Brand Affects a Small Town’s Development? Case Study of Wangqingtuo, Tianjin, China

Chinese small towns are usually developed with single core industry,and the urban brand is the identity of a town that formed with the development of its industry.However,when the core industry representing its urban brand is facing a changing situation or market,will the brand be a motivation or an obstruction of the development of a town?The paper combined top-down and bottom-up research method to study the function of the urban brand in Wangqingtuo town in Tianjin,China.We studied over 400 samples(including government staff and town citizens)to make questionnaire investigation about the town’s branding.And we found that the solidified urban brand is a complicated emotional symbol for both government and citizens.The town has demand of exploring and developing new dominant industry,and it has the expectation to keep branding and upgrade its current core industry.

Managing Accessibility- The Configurational Approach to the Inclusive Design of Urban Spaces

This paper concerns the theme of the universal accessibility to urban spaces, proposing the contribution of configurational approach to their inclusive design. Born in the first Nineties on the roots of the efforts and the studies for reducing material and architectural barriers for disabled people, such discipline extends its sphere and purposes so as to mitigate the effects of spatial exclusion of a wider and wider variety of human categories, up to virtually include any potential urban user. Several questions persuade that a merely functional approach, essentially based on the position of the located activities, cannot be said satisfying： only a configurational approach can account for the effects of the grid configuration on the actual accessibility of its spaces. Our research focuses on Italian urban settlements, which appear as ideal case studies, due to the typical consistency of their urban spaces, which, especially in the inner historical cores, are densely build, geometrically irregular and hence generally far from actually providing a universal material accessibility. Here the impedance of space is much more than a theoretical hypothesis and concrete interventions are generally requested to eliminate or reduce its barriers and to make space actually and safely usable. Rather than at indicating the technical solution of single urban problems, which of course are strongly different each other, the research aims at defining a method suitable for any local context. Such method, integrating into a reliable tool the configurational vision with the functional and interactional approach, will provide a hierarchy of urban spaces with reference to the necessity of their universal accessibility.

The Town Concentrated Area Planning in Huzhou Municipality

Planning for the town concentrated area is a new research subject at present. This paper reviews the urban development history of Huzhou Municipality concerned with its planning experiences; sums up its features on four aspects: economic development level, ownership,development stage of its urban groups and their space distribution; analyses the major problemsduring its development process. Besides of this, the paper discusses the development strategy forspace distribution, puts forward the plan of ’three concentrations’ and the concept of ’urban-ruralgroup’ as well as the principle for urban land use and prevision role of developing regional infrastructure in realizing the overall objectives of urban system.

Development and Planning of Small Towns in China:Speculation, Reassessment, and Prospect

Small town development has been one of the most remarkable features of urbanization in China: This paper systematically examines different definitions of small towns and critically assesses various interpretations of the functions performed by Chinese towns in national development. Prior to the- 1980s, small towns were enthusiastically portrayed as storage reservoirs that can dam the flux of the surplus rural labor force into large cities. Existing problems associated with the growth and planning of small towns have resulted in a sober reassessment of the role played by the towns. Despite the partial retreat of enthusiasm about the town-based urbanization strategy, small towns continue to flourish spontaneously in the grassroots level of the Chinese countryside. A new pattern of ’urbanizationfrom below’, motivated primarily by the growth of township and village enterprises and centeredaround small towns, is quickly taking shape in the country patticularly in the coastal extended metropolitan regions.