Urbanization in China

Addressing the most pressing issues of urbanization in China—urban planning, land policy, rural-to-urban migration, and financing—this book enhances our understanding of the challenges at hand and helps policy makers and urban planners make decisions that are economically sound, environmentally desirable, and politically feasible.

About the Editors

Yan Song is a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and directs the Program on Chinese Cities, an initiative of the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.



Chengri Ding is a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He was the founding director of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy's China Program.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Yan Song and Chengri Ding

I. Urban Planning in the Face of Urbanization

1. Urban Development Patterns in China: New, Renewed, and Ignored Urban Spaces, Tingwei Zhang

2. Value Capture Through Integrated Land Use–Transit Development: Experience from Hong Kong, Taipei, and Shanghai, Ming Zhang

3. Introduction of Price Signals into Land Use Planning: Are They Applicable in China?, Paul Cheshire

II. Land Policy

4. Policy and Praxis of Land Acquisition in China, Chengri Ding

5. Assessing Farmland Protection Policy in China, Erik Lichtenberg and Chengri Ding

6. Managing China’s Arable Land Resources in an Era of Sustainability, Robert Ash

III. Rural-to-Urban Migration and Its Implications

7. The Role of China’s Urbanizing Villages in Housing Rural Migrants, Yan Song, Yves Zenou, and Chengri Ding

8. Chengzhongcun: China’s Urbanizing Villages from Multiple Perspectives, Michael Leaf

9. Housing Rural Migrants in Urban China: Lessons from the United States, Roberto G. Quercia and Yan Song

10.Efficiency in China’s Urban Labor Markets, Jeffrey S. Zax

Part IV. Financing China’s Urbanization

11. Public Finance Challenges for Chinese Urban Development, Randall Crane

12. Urban Infrastructure and Financing in China, Weiping Wu

13. Non-Performing Loan Resolution in the Context of China’s Transitional Economy, Bing Wang and Richard Peiser

Conclusion, Yan Song and Chengri Ding