< Terug naar vorige pagina

Publicatie

Greenways as a New Planning Strategy in the Pearl River Delta, China

Boek - Dissertatie

The term greenway is a derivation from the terms greenbelt and parkway, and it refers to linear green open spaces that serve ecological, recreational, cultural, aesthetic, or other purposes that are compatible with the concept of sustainable land use. In the 1990s, the worldwide greenway movement arose as a response, driven by basic human needs, to urbanization. In different contexts, greenways are an adaptive landscape form that has been involved in diverse fields, including landscape architecture, recreational policies, environmental protection, and ecological conservation. While the multiple benefits of greenways have been intensively investigated, greenways are receiving increasing interest in public policies, especially in those regions that are dealing with issues associated with rapid urbanization. However, while the heterogeneity of the forms and functions of greenways increases, few studies have focused on the interplay among the greenway discourse, natural-spatial conditions, institutional practices, and their influences on greenway spaces and public perceptions. As a new planning strategy, greenways were first adopted in a government report, Proposal of the Pearl River Delta Greenway Network Drawing on Foreign Experiences, to the provincial Party Secretary in 2009. With the approval of the Guangdong Province government, a three-year campaign for the Pearl River Delta Greenway Network was initiated, in which all nine municipalities in the Pearl River Delta were involved. The campaign not only established a greenway network of 7,350 kilometers but also transformed the regional discourse of greenways into institutional practices at the local level, which led to the growth of greenways after 2012 that reached over 150,000 kilometers by 2019. In the meantime, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) greenways have been seen as pilot projects in China and have led to a nationwide greenway movement. According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural development, 56,000 kilometers of greenways in 31 provinces were developed between 2010 and 2018. However, there has also been a long-term debate on the functions and forms of the PRD greenways, in which some actors and scholars have criticized the PRD greenways for their lack of ecological concerns, the overlap of the greenways and the existing transportation infrastructures. However, little evidence has been found in the existing literature that can examine these arguments and can elaborate on the possible causes and potential issues. Through in-depth empirical studies on the PRD, this research argues that the relation between planning background and planning activities plays an important role in influencing planning outcomes. The empirical findings show that because of the scale of the metropolitan region, the intensively developed landscape context, and the diverse issues associated with rapid urbanization, the provincial and municipal governments developed a special approach so that the greenway network could be established in a short time. First, drawing on the institutional tradition of a pressurized system, the provincial government initiated a centralized institutional structure to promote multi-government cooperation and to supervise the assignments that were distributed to the lower-level governments. Second, instead of engaging in land acquisition for new corridors, local governments preferred to integrate existing open spaces that were public rights-of-way, so that the development of greenways could be rapidly achieved without consuming areas of valuable land. Third, in the implementation of greenways, the original ownership and particularly the administrative jurisdictions usually remained unchanged, which also helped to identify the responsible actors involved in finance and construction, as well as postcampaign management and maintenance. From the perspective of landscape governance, these arrangements could be seen as adaptive strategies to combine the greenways and the pressurized system into a regional discourse and to solve the policy conflicts between the regional discourse and local practices at different stages. In the end, transportation, recreational, social and economic benefits were found in many cases. In general, the development of the PRD greenways has contributed to providing transportation routes and recreational resources to both urban and rural areas. In particular, the greenways serve as compensatory public goods, such as nonmotorized infrastructures, street greeneries and recreational facilities, to areas that lack government investment. In addition, the greenways help to establish a tourism economy in some villages that are struggling with issues of poverty and outflowing population. However, the centralized institutional structure in the PRD also results in a series of new issues. First, greenway development in the PRD has a high dependency on the administrative system, while the decrease in political attention could lead to insufficient investment and management of the greenways at the postcampaign stage. Second, the participation of social groups is still rare in the PRD greenways, even though such groups usually play important roles in acquiring land, applying funds, management and maintenance in the Western countries. Third, because of tight schedules and inadequate resources, transportation-led greenways have become the primary form of greenways, which has resulted in conflicting perceptions of greenways and serious challenges to the recreational and ecological values of greenways. Through the case of Shenzhen, this research unravels the heterogeneity in the greenway network, in which disparities of the corridor width, traffic impact and land use were found in Shenzhen. Corridor width, traffic impact and land use are crucial factors in determining the conservational, recreational and transportation values, which are considered the three-legged stool of greenway development. However, the empirical findings in Shenzhen show that although many off-road greenways have wide green corridors, the majority of greenways are developed based on the existing transportation infrastructure and street greeneries. These transportation-led greenways are the result of the special approach to greenway development in the PRD. In addition, they also reflect the rising trend of the so-called new urban greenways, which serve as alternative transportation in intensively developed cities and are widely found throughout the world. The investigation of public perception also indicates the recreational benefits of transportation-led greenways being the most common form of greenway in the PRD. The majority of the respondents recognize the positive impacts of greenways on their quality of life. The results further reveal that although greenways comprise a high-density network in the PRD, the respondents still have difficulties in accessing the greenways. The primary reason for this difficulty is that many of the developed greenways do not have identifiable characteristics in the surrounding landscape to contrast them with those streets without greenways. Furthermore, although ecological benefits are rarely recognized, the respondents suggest that there are many demands that greenways can serve, including both hiking trails in the outskirts of the PRD and everyday commute routes. From this perspective, as a new planning strategy, greenways are evolving into various forms, such as the South China Historical Trails and Guangdong Blueways, to serve diverse needs. Situated within the Chinese context, this research outlines two crucial policy implications. On the one hand, rather than diverse lowest-level government units, professional agencies for greenway development and maintenance are required, which also need policy support for obtaining special funding and encouraging public participation. On the other hand, more attention should be paid to the heterogeneity of the greenways and the examination of the proposed planning goals since evidence-based planning is still commonly absent in practices, which leads to issues of inconsistency between planning goals and planning outcomes.
Jaar van publicatie:2020
Toegankelijkheid:Closed