Remaking Sustainable Urbanism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

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2. Introduction

   • Xiaoling Zhang

   Pages 1-15

3. The Theoretical Critique of the Sustainable Urbanism Narrative

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. Of Tesla and Eco-city: Urban Sustainability as Territorial Local Trap?

      • C. P. Pow

      Pages 19-35

   3. Making an Urban Ecotopia in China: Knowledge, Power, and Governmentality

      • Lili Wang, Xiaoling Zhang

      Pages 37-55

   4. Political Ecology of Chinese Smart Eco-cities

      • Linjun Xie, May Tan-Mullins, Ali Cheshmehzangi

      Pages 57-78

4. The Dynamics of “Glocal” Governance and Policy Mobility of Sustainable Urbanism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 79-79

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   2. City Branding in Chinese Cities: From Tactical Greenwashing to Successful Industrial Transformation

      • Martin de Jong, Meiling Han, Haiyan Lu

      Pages 81-99

   3. From Shannon to Shenzhen and Back: Sustainable Urbanism and Inter-city Partnerships in China and Europe

      • Federico Caprotti

      Pages 101-119

   4. Policy Mobility in Green Urbanism: A Comparative Case Study of Suzhou and Tianjin

      • Yang Fu, Xiaoling Zhang

      Pages 121-143

5. Social Inclusiveness of Sustainable Urbanization in China

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 145-145

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   2. Making Urbanization Socially Inclusive: Integrating In-Situ Rural Development with City-Centered Urbanization

      • Jieming Zhu

      Pages 147-160

   3. Livelihood Transitions During China’s Ecological Urbanization: An Ethnographic Observation

      • I-Chun Catherine Chang

      Pages 161-183

   4. The Quality of Life of the Land-Lost Peasants and Informal Development on the Rural–Urban Fringe in Beijing

      • Pengjun Zhao, Mengzhu Zhang

      Pages 185-218

6. Back Matter

   Pages 219-237

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This book analyses the implications of eco-urbanism re-making for policy and practice under the transformational trends of economic decentralization and market reform in China. While the guiding themes are space, scale, and governance of cities, the book focuses on three interrelated prevailing processes of local green space reproduction, cross-scale mediation of eco-city planning ideology and mobilized social-economic-political intricacies among different countries.


This book addresses the ongoing global diffusion and diversification of sustainable urbanism discourses, debates and practices to portray, evaluate, remake and implement a sustainable form of urban development, using China as a national example. As eco-city practice becomes a city-branding instrument worldwide, this new urban development vision is also well embraced by Chinese local governments. In these contexts, the Chinese government has initiated and endorsed a number of massive projects to promote green urbanism, steering urbanization onto a more sustainable trajectory. The construction of these “ecotopias” involves a multitude of processes ranging from policy transfer/mobility to institutional design, from innovation in green technologies to the promotion of green buildings, and from policy implementation to public participation.

• sustainable urbanism
• green cities
• sustainable cities
• ethical cities
• China studies
• comparative politics
• comparative governance
• urbanization
• developing countries
• Urban governance
• urban geography and urbanism

• Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

  Xiaoling Zhang

Dr. Xiaoling Zhang joined City University of Hong Kong in the winter of 2012 following prior academic roles at the University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She has written widely on sustainable urbanization and urban redevelopment in China, speculative real estate developers, land use planning/policy and gentrification. She has also engaged in environmental studies, particularly in developers’ behaviour/actions in contributing to social responsibility/sustainable development, energy policy and renewable and sustainable energy use in the built environment. She organized a session on “Social-environmental justice and sustainability” at the prestigious 2015 Association of American Geographers Conference at Chicago, and another session at the 2016 Association of American Geographers Conference at San Francisco titled “Urban inequality and unjust sustainability in China”.

She won the Outstanding Paper Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence in 2011. She has published over 100 papers in leading peer-reviewed international academic journals, including 40 SSCI/SCI journal papers for Land Use Policy, Urban Studies, Cities, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, etc. Dr. Zhang also serves on the editorial board of several academic peer-reviewed journals. She is currently organizing and managing two special issues for the high-impact Journal of Cleaner Production on “Toward a Regenerative Sustainability Paradigm for the Built Environment: from Vision to Reality” and “Transitions to Sustainable Consumption and Production within Cities”. 


Xiaoling is continuing her work on gentrification and jiaoyufication featured in China and has a longstanding interest in housing segregation, land expropriation, sustainable urbanism and environmental studies. Her recent theoretical interest has focused on environmental justice and unjust sustainability in China and is currently developing the themes in a paper on ‘Jiaoyufication, or education-led gentrification in Nanjing’ with Qiyan Wu from Shanghai Normal University. Research on housing studies is also in hand with Dr Helen Bao, Department of Land Economics, Cambridge University.

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