5. Development of Pearl River Delta as a Mega-city Region

2009 ◽  
pp. 79-95
Keyword(s):  
Pearl River Delta ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Pearl River ◽  
City Region

Planning discourses, local state commitment, and the making of a new state space (NSS) for China: Evidence from regional strategic development plans in the Pearl River Delta

Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (14) ◽  
pp. 3281-3298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Sun ◽  
Roger CK Chan
Keyword(s):  
Pearl River Delta ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Pearl River ◽  
City Region ◽  
Strategic Development ◽  
The Pearl River Delta ◽  
State Administration ◽  
Development Plans ◽  
The Pearl River ◽  
The City

Grounded in the interpretive tradition, this paper applies the theory of New State Space (NSS) to China’s city regionalism. We argue that in the NSS effort in China, planning discourses enable a regulatory framework to be applied at the level of city region. City regionalism corresponds to the conceptualisation of NSS in two dimensions. First, the rise of the city region gives rise to a new territorial form of state administration. Second, the city region is made to be the most appropriate scale encapsulating capital–labour relationship (CLR). This study uses NSS to examine the regional strategic development plans (RSDPs) of the Pearl River Delta Region and presents two primary arguments based on an interpretation of the Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta (2008–2020) (OPRDPRD) and the preliminary actions of various levels of government based on it. First, RSDPs serve as effective regulatory tools that not only enable new state administration articulating regulatory responsibility throughout the various levels of governmental hierarchy, but also elaborate the CLR in the interest of regional based industrial development, infrastructure construction, and formulation of social policies. Second, the city region has become a site for political rhetoric and related actions whereby regulatory order is unfolding in order to itself effect an economic restructuring and political reshuffle. Creating a city region is ‘planning ideological’ and solving problems is difficult because of the asymmetric jurisdictional power relations between municipalities.

Multiple creators of knowledge-intensive service networks: A case study of the Pearl River Delta city-region

Urban Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (9) ◽  
pp. 2000-2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xu Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Pearl River Delta ◽  
Functional Differentiation ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Pearl River ◽  
Business Networks ◽  
City Region ◽  
Urban Networks ◽  
The Pearl River Delta ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
The Pearl River

Functional differentiation between cities and the characteristics of their inter-urban networks in the emerging knowledge-intensive service economy have attracted extensive attention in urban studies. However, research on urban networks generated by advanced producer services (APS) activities has focused either on the structures of the networks in general or on the patterns created by various service sectors. In comparison, whether advanced services originating from different regions might generate different inter-city networks is less well studied. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper explores how APS firms with headquarters in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), in mainland China or overseas impact the internal urban system and the external relations of the PRD through their business networks. The findings indicate that while cities in the PRD are connected with each other and with other Chinese cities primarily through the business networks of local and national APS firms, the region’s linkages with overseas services centres are shaped predominantly by major international firms from the developed world. The variegated service geographies created by different types of APS firms within and outside China not only reflect the firms’ different development histories, client orientations in specific markets and home regions’ economic conditions, but they are also significantly shaped by China’s unique regulatory environment and complex state–market relations.

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