Some Thoughts on China’s Territorial Spatial Planning in the New Period

Guilin CHENG, Xiaoyun LI, Jingxin ZENG

College of City Construction, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China

Abstract The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly proposed to "establish a spatial planning system, delimit production, living, and ecological space development control boundaries, and implement use control; improve energy, water and land conservation and intensive use system", opening the prelude to territorial spatial planning in the new era. Reviewing the history of planning and development and summarizing experience and lessons is not only a necessary way to promote the development of territorial spatial planning in the new period, but also a useful reference for territorial spatial planning and construction in the new period.

Key words Urban planning, Spatial planning, Territorial spatial planning

1 Introduction

Territorial planning is based on the overall strategic goals and direction of China’s economic and social development and the social culture, economic development, and natural environment of the planned area, to promote the rational development and utilization of land resources and the development process. It is a comprehensive spatial layout for China’s major land construction activities, the guiding planning opinions formulated for the comprehensive improvement and comprehensive development of China’s environment, and an important basis for the medium and long-term development plan of each planned area. Territorial spatial planning includes the rational layout of territorial space, as well as the rational development, utilization and integration of the planned space. The current territorial spatial planning system has distinct operating characteristics of mutual penetration between horizontal and vertical in terms of form, has the operating characteristics of repetition and intersecting in terms of content, and has greater complexity in terms of standards. Therefore, there are greater planning difficulties in the process of territorial spatial planning[1].

Especially in the spatial planning of cities and counties at all levels, the planning content involves many different standards including land use classification standard, legal system, planning deadline, preparation, approval,etc., resulting in many conflicts and contradictions in the planning process. In terms of planning procedure, there are also many overlaps and dislocations of controls. The most prominent performance is the troublesome approval work. All these situations will lead to problems such as insufficiency, waste and confusion in resource utilization and control of territorial spatial planning, reducing the effect of territorial spatial planning.

2 Development process of territorial spatial planning

2.1 Early days of the founding of the People’s Republic (origin)New China’s urban planning and regional land planning originated from the first 5-year plan (1953-1957), centered on economic construction. The first task was to solve the spatial layout of national key industrial projects and supporting projects, and some practical problems in the national macro plan. Combined with the special historical period at that time, the scholars at that time were influenced by Western urban planning thoughts, so the development of territorial spatial planning was relatively slow, without a system.

2.2 Early stage of reform and opening up (recovery, development)Since the reform and opening up in 1978, China has entered a new period of comprehensive restoration of urban planning and reconstruction of the construction management system. Urban planning has entered a stage of rapid development. Overall urban planning, regional planning, and urban system planning have been carried out. On the one hand, this is attributed to the adjustment of relevant national policies. The State Council and the national congress have successively promulgated theUrbanPlanningLawofthePeople’sRepublicofChina,InterimMeasuresfortheExaminationandApprovalofUrbanPlanning,RegulationsonUrbanPlanningand other relevant laws and regulations, completely putting forward the urban development policy, the basic principles of urban planning and legal responsibilities, clarifying the relationship between economic development and urban development and the basic methods for determining urban development strategy, urban nature, and urban scale according to different economic development characteristics, regions and traffic conditions[2]. On the other hand, reform and opening up greatly accelerated the process of industrialization in China, and the resulting demand for urbanization development has also objectively greatly promoted the development of urban planning.

2.3 New millennium (prosperity, bottleneck)After entering the 21st century, with the continuous update and promotion of new space planning concepts, urban-rural overall planning and regional overall planning are used as the basis and means to control the allocation of urban spatial resources. While guiding the rapid development of cities, facing the complex situation of large-scale urbanization and the conflict between the expansion of departmental powers and the urgent needs of local economic development, a series of incompatibility with governance needs has appeared, and problems such as various plans emerging in endlessly, chaotic levels, incompatible standards, and overlapping management have become increasingly prominent. Overall planning and subordinate planning responsibilities are unclear. There is a lack of effective allocation and management of global space resources (on the one hand, resources are not cared about or cared for, and resources are not fully underutilized[6]; on the one hand, to pursue quick success and quick profit, resources are usually utilized abusively), restricting the further orderly development of social economy and effective management and control of resources and environment. As a consequence, the development of spatial planning has fallen into a bottleneck period. "Multi-regulation conflict" is a product of a special stage of China’s social and economic development. The root cause is the lack of consistency and coordination of the overall goals and principles of social and economic development in the formulation of goals and principles of various plans. The key to resolving "multi-regulation conflict" is to clarify the essential attributes and core issues of space planning, improve the top-level design of space planning, and reconstruct the control index system that various plans must comply with[7].

2.4 After the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee (new period)In order to solve this problem, theDecisiononSeveralMajorIssuesofComprehensivelyDeepeningReformapproved by the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Party clearly states that it is necessary to "establish a spatial planning system, delimit production, living, and ecological space development control boundaries, and implement use control; and improve the energy, water, and land conservation and intensive use system". In December, 2013, Chairman Xi delivered an important speech in the Central Urbanization Work Conference, demanding "people-oriented, optimized layout, construction of scientific and reasonable macroscopic urbanization layout based on the carrying capacity of resources and environment, and a blueprint to the end". In 2014, the State Council issued theNationalNewUrbanizationPlan(2014-2020), emphasizing "strengthening mutual connection between urban planning and economic and social development, construction of major functional areas, land and resources utilization, ecological environmental protection, and infrastructure construction and promoting integration of economic and social development master plan, urban planning, land use planning,etc. in areas where conditions permit", marking the rise of "multi-regulations integration" to national policy. China has successively launched pilot projects of "multi-regulation integration" in 28 counties and cities, and provincial-level spatial planning pilots in Hainan, Ningxia, Jilin, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Henan, Guangxi and Guizhou. Active explorations have been made on how to construct a spatial planning system, how to prepare a spatial plan, what content to prepare, how to serve social and economic development, and how to manage and control space resources. The territorial spatial planning has entered a new era.

3 Comparison of new and old territorial spatial planning systems

In March, 2018, the Central People’s Government of People’s Republic of China issued a plan to deepen the reform of party and state institutions. In May, 2018, the Ministry of Natural Resources established the Bureau of Territorial Spatial Planning, further clarifying the institutional framework and operating mechanism of the national spatial planning system from the top-level design level. The newly formed Ministry of Natural Resources has integrated the responsibilities of the National Development and Reform Commission in organizing the planning of major functional zones, and the management responsibilities of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development in preparing urban and rural plans. It unifies exercise of all territorial space use control and ecological protection and restoration responsibilities, gradually building a spatial planning system and governance system with Chinese characteristics, that is, being based on the new situation, new tasks and new requirements, clarifying the positioning of various planning functions, and straightening out the relationship between national development plans and national-level special plans, regional plans, and spatial plans to avoid overlaps and conflicts; unifying the planning system to form a planning force; and insisting that the lower-level planning should obey the upper-level planning, the lower-level planning serves the upper-level planning, and the equal-level planning are coordinated with each other, thus establishing a national planning system that is led by national development plan, based on spatial planning, supported by special planning and regional planning, and composed of national, provincial, city and county-level planning, with accurate positioning, clear boundaries, complementary functions, and unified convergence. The comparison between the old and new national planning systems is shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Comparison between new and old national planning systems

4 Overall thinking of China’s current territorial spatial planning

At present, the national territorial spatial planning has not yet been issued. However, many provinces and cities have already started the compilation of national territorial spatial planning. Combined with the connotation of territorial spatial planning in the new era, it requires changes in thinking: goal-oriented, based on ecological civilization, strengthen the bottom-line safety awareness; inherit and innovate multi-regulation integration to learn from each other’s strengths; based on the evaluation of resource and environmental carrying capacity and the suitability of space development, constrained by three areas and three lines, full coverage, rigid control, use control; scientific planning, improve quality, focus on conservation, coordinated layout, and green development[8]. The overall work idea should cover the following aspects.

4.1 Creating a digital pictureAround the construction of a global digital picture, current various types of resource information are investigated, collected, coordinated, and processed to formulate data standards, and optimize and improve the resource catalog. Based on the results of the third national land survey, multi-dimensional and all-element information such as population, society, economy, natural resources, and environment is incorporated. Through scientific technical means (excavation, cleaning, integration,etc.), the production of various index evaluation data is completed, and a global digital map is constructed[9].

4.2 Carrying out evaluation on resource and environmental carrying capacity and space development suitabilityBased on a global digital picture, resource and environment carrying capacity and space development suitability evaluation work is carried out to master the carrying capacity of resources and environment and the potential of territorial spatial development, further approve the bottom line limit of urban development, and judge the suitability level of various types of territorial space in the region for development[10]. The area with higher carrying capacity is more able to support economic and social development, and it should be the preferred area for future construction land layout; and the area with lower carrying capacity has weaker carrying capacity for economic and social development, and it should be used as an ecological guarantee to give priority to the protection role.

4.3 Carrying out the work of "three-space and three-line"

Defining "three-space and three-line" is the core work of unifying various spatial planning foundations and use management and control, and is an important measure to promote "multi-regulation integration". Based on the evaluation results of resource and environmental carrying capacity and the suitability of territorial spatial development, combined with the actual situation of the planned area, the delineation of three spaces (ecological space, agricultural space, urban space) and three lines (red line of ecological protection, permanent basic farmland, and urban development boundary) is completed, improving the basic framework of territorial spatial planning.

4.4 Constructing a blueprint for territorial spatial planning

Within the basic framework of territorial spatial planning, the compilation of territorial spatial plans at all levels and topics is completed, and various special planning data results (such as major infrastructure, ecological protection, public services and cultural relics) and detailed planning data results (such as urban development boundaries, functional unit planning and village planning) are loaded into the framework for comparison analysis. The conflict areas caused by superimposition are eliminated through technical means, laws and regulations or administrative means. At the same time, the experience of eliminating contradictions and differences is summarized and the rules for coordination are formed. Various control lines are delimited to form a unified and organically integrated blueprint for territorial spatial planning.

4.5 Carrying out the information construction of territorial spatial planning and governance, building a digital planning achievement management system and a monitoring, evaluation and early warning management system, and strengthening the control of territorial spatial useRelying on cutting-edge artificial intelligence, big data, Internet+ and other high technology, combining remote sensing, global positioning system, geographic information system ("3S") and other information technology, based on a blueprint of territorial spatial planning, the information construction of territorial spatial planning is carried out, a territorial space use control system covering the entire territory is established, the territorial spatial planning and control system is improved, a multi-level monitoring, evaluation and early warning management system for the country, province, city, county and town is built, the rights and interests protection function of natural resource property rights is improved, natural resources environmental investigation and evaluation and monitoring and early warning management is strengthened, the management of data resources in territorial spatial planning is coordinated, the dynamic update of data and business applications is strengthened, the whole process of territorial spatial planning is supervised and controlled, and a service system for all levels of government agencies and the public is established to effectively support the entire process of formulation, approval, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and early warning of spatial planning.

5 Conclusions

The territorial spatial planning system in the new era, as an important means for the Central People’s Government to comprehensively deepen the reform of territorial space governance, will be completely different from the traditional space planning system. It is not a simple "multi-regulation integration", but a reconstruction of the existing spatial planning system[11]. It is a major reform of China’s spatial planning system. It will fundamentally solve the contradiction of multiple regulations, completely change the thinking centered on economic construction, emphasize the concept of people-oriented, harmonious development of man and nature, and reflect the strategic, scientific and coordinated nature of territorial spatial planning. Combined with the reform of national institutions and the transformation of functions, the focus is on the supervision and control of the entire process of approval, implementation, management and operation, and the guiding and restrictive role of territorial spatial planning on the economic development of various regions, realizing the modernization of governance system and governance capabilities.