eprintid: 10183205 rev_number: 8 eprint_status: archive userid: 699 dir: disk0/10/18/32/05 datestamp: 2023-12-07 12:04:43 lastmod: 2023-12-07 12:04:43 status_changed: 2023-12-07 12:04:43 type: article metadata_visibility: show sword_depositor: 699 creators_name: Wang, Weikai creators_name: Wu, fulong creators_name: Zhang, Fangzhu title: Metropolitanization through making ‘new metropolitan plans’ in China ispublished: pub divisions: UCL divisions: B04 divisions: C04 divisions: F39 keywords: Metropolitan region, Metropolitan planning, Urban governance, City regionalism, China note: © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). abstract: Although mega-city regions have attracted wide attention in China, recent ‘metropolitanization’ at the multi-city scale is poorly understood. To tackle the void, this paper examines the emergent ‘metropolitan plans’ (dushiquan guihua) since 2019 and identifies a paradigm shift in metropolitanization from ‘territorial urbanization’ to ‘multi-city regionalism’ in China. We find that 1) as a fuzzy and dynamic concept, the metropolitan region has been mainly employed as a policy object for state rationalities and has been upscaled from a city region scale to a multi-city scale; 2) regarding planning practices, the new metropolitan plans function as an overall collaborative framework to support priority tasks for city regionalism in a shorter term rather than formulating long-term spatial strategies; 3) as space of governance, the recent state-orchestrated metropolitan region reflects the newest round of state rescaling process to cope with domestic uneven development and urban issues through ‘urban unification’, and its materialization heavily relies on concrete cross-boundary projects delivery and coordination through soft governance. These findings not only provide conceptual clarity and relational understandings of the metropolitanization process but also exemplify the distinctiveness of the Chinese metropolitanization approach in terms of scalar logic, planning style, and associated governance mechanisms. This paper furthers the understanding of the divergence and diversity of metropolitan planning and governance practices in different political-economic circumstances. date: 2024-01 date_type: published publisher: Elsevier official_url: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102987 oa_status: green full_text_type: pub language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 2115364 doi: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102987 lyricists_name: Wang, Weikai lyricists_id: WWANH06 actors_name: Wang, Weikai actors_id: WWANH06 actors_role: owner funding_acknowledgements: 832845 [European Research Council] full_text_status: public publication: Habitat International volume: 143 article_number: 102987 issn: 0197-3975 citation: Wang, Weikai; Wu, fulong; Zhang, Fangzhu; (2024) Metropolitanization through making ‘new metropolitan plans’ in China. Habitat International , 143 , Article 102987. 10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102987 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102987>. Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183205/1/1-s2.0-S0197397523002473-main.pdf