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

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Remaking Sustainable Urbanism

Abstract

This chapter opens with the contrasting vignette of a small Irish new town and a highly urbanised Chinese mega-city for two reasons: the first is to highlight the at times fuzzy but nevertheless real links and networks across space and time that tie different modes of urban, economic and environmental development together. Indeed, Shannon and Shenzhen are linked not just to each other, but to the hundreds if not thousands of other SEZS worldwide that have been built since the 1950s as experimental spaces. At heart, the fact that networks focused on future city visions and projects exist in and between China and other countries is testament to the enduring allure of thinking about urban, and therefore societal, futures.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, grant number ES/L015978/2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Federico Caprotti

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  1. Federico Caprotti
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Correspondence to Federico Caprotti .

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  1. Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

    Xiaoling Zhang

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Caprotti, F. (2019). From Shannon to Shenzhen and Back: Sustainable Urbanism and Inter-city Partnerships in China and Europe. In: Zhang, X. (eds) Remaking Sustainable Urbanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3350-7_6

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