The compact development emerging in Western contexts of lower density and urban sprawl has presented greater transportation and public health advantages than non-compact development. At the same time, China’s special conditions have induced a factual trend of high-density compactness. Compared to the strengths of motorized or public transit, the negative impacts on healthy cities and public welfare have raised lasting concerns about compact development in high-density cities. Unlike the West, Chinese cities exhibit relatively high-density landscapes, land-use-centered compact strategies, and economic-oriented high-density tendencies. Compact development, along with increasing urban density, may lead to over-concentrated problems in normally high-density environments. It is necessary to implement differentiated compact policies between urban and rural regions, to develop multi-objective compactness for high-density cities, and to become more inclusive about diverse individual demands when supplying spatial planning products.

Building density is one of the important indicators to measure urban spatial density, and its intracity distribution pattern could to some extent reflect a city’s spatial growth features at the horizontal scale. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the distribution law of intra-city building density to reveal the basic characteristics of urban spatial growth and formulate planning strategies to promote sustainable urban growth. In this paper, 287 cities at the prefecture level and above in China are taken as research samples, and the building density data in 2000, 2010 and 2020 at the 100-meter grid scale are used to construct the urban peripheral growth index based on the gradient analysis of building density in concentric rings from the urban center. The index is utilized to study the spatial growth features of the sample cities and the main conclusions are as follows: (1) The distribution of urban building density gradually decreases from the center to the periphery, which can be better fitted by negative exponential function; (2) Most of the cities in 2000-2010 and 2010-2020 show the features of increasing peripheral growth. The increasing peripheral growth index from high to low is in the order of big cities, medium-sized cities, super- and mega- cities, small cities, while that of the small cities is not statistically significant; (3) Natural geographical conditions, population and economic
scale, macro-policy and planning guidance are important factors affecting urban spatial growth features and the discrepancy of cities of different scales.

The Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region (MRN), which is regarded as a model of German regional governance, features nearly 70 years of cross-state governance practices. Its experience can provide implications for the regional governance across provinces and cities in China. This paper reviews regional governance experience from the perspective of rescaling and focuses on an empirical case, MRN. Literature and interviews with key actors are drawn to support the analysis of the participating actors, governing instruments, and coordinating mechanisms in its rescaling process. The analysis results show that: (1) in terms of participants, the cross-jurisdictional governance in MRN has achieved diversified participants led by public sector; (2) in terms of governance instruments, a regional integration plan with legal status has been developed, which is well integrated into the German federal planning system and, together with market and administrative means, ensures the subsequent development of related projects (e.g., regional transportation, blue-green infrastructure, and urban-rural housing supply); (3) in terms of governance mechanism, a two-tier “strategic-operational”networked governance framework has been built, which fully stimulates the dynamism of administrative and market actors. In addition, we also discuss the governance of comparable regions in China in the light of the existing German experience and summarize the policy implications concerning the clarification of the rights and responsibilities of participants, the integration into the planning system, and the reconstruction of the governance network.

In the context of the global push for green and sustainable development, green roofs and green walls have garnered extensive attention in the development and construction of high-density urban areas, which are important means to alleviate the negative environmental impacts associated with urbanization. While these technologies are widely used in some European and American cities, their development in China has lagged relatively behind. Green roof and green wall pioneer cities worldwide have implemented promotion policies for more than 40 years. London, which has had a policy in place for only 10 years, has made remarkable achievements in a short time, is becoming a relative newcomer on the urban greening stage. Unlike many other cities that promote urban greening (especially green roofs) through providing various forms of tax reductions, financial subsidies and incentives, it has been achieved primarily through the land-use planning process of the three-tier (national–regional–local) planning system. Taking London as an example, this paper analyzes the development history and construction of its urban green roof and green wall policies, and summarizes the experiences that can be applied to the sustainable development of green roofs and green walls in China from three aspects: the policy basis driven by environmental issues, the policy combination coordinated by administrative hierarchy, and the technological innovation for compound goal achievement.

Since the 1970s, neoliberalism has spread from Europe and the United States to the whole world with the process of globalization, and Japan’s urban policies have also been deeply influenced. Firstly, this paper puts forward a hypothesis that the neoliberal urban policy has caused the polarization and urban divide in Tokyo. Secondly, through a national-scale analysis, it has observed that since neoliberalism became the mainstream urban policy in Japan after the 2000s, Tokyo’s concentration trend has accelerated significantly. Meanwhile, the city-scale spatial and policy analysis result reflects that the increasingly urban divide is happening within Tokyo. The analysis tests and supports the validity of the hypothesis proposed in this paper. At the same time, it also finds that urban development policies of Tokyo Metropolitans Government (TMG) as well wards have a strong co-relation with the advancement of gentrification. Finally, we call for urban planning to shift from a neoliberal urban policy to a regional collaborative urban policy, which should be based on a gradual urban renewal-oriented type, rather than the large-scale urban redevelopment. In the current post-neoliberalism, this paper provides a way of thinking about the paradigm transformation of planning theory in China.

The provision of urban public amenities is one of the core issues of the “government-marketsociety”tripartite collaborative governance in urban operation. How to stimulate social capital investment and balance equity, efficiency and benefit under the macro-control and leadership of the government has received continuous attention. Over the past 100 years since the opening as a commercial port, Hong Kong has constantly reformed and improved the supply mechanism of public amenities responding social and economic development and local demand. Currently, it has established a mature and efficient supply mechanism involving multiple entities. Based on literature review and field investigation, this paper reviews the historical evolution of the supply mode of various public amenities, including sanitation, culture and sports, elderly service and health care, etc. It summaries the main characteristics of current supply patterns and strategies, including “district-based” administrative guidance, multi-channel appropriation of financial assistance, hierarchical and collaborative governance between space and society, multi-suppliers of social welfare, and hospital clusters by location for “all-round medical care”. Meanwhile, through reviewing the experience and challenges of governance entities, space configuration, supporting mechanism, this paper also provides the following policy implications for the mainland cities: establishing prudent special financial funds and efficient feedback mechanism, defining the participatory field of social entities and optimizing the allocation mechanism, integrating the hierachicalization of spatial allocation and social demand, balancing spatial intensification and meticulous management, ensuring the regulative effect of relevant laws and ordinance.