This paper reviews the major “paradigms” for urban planning around the world and classifies the planning in China into three paradigms: constructionoriented planning, development-oriented planning, and regulation-oriented planning. The contemporary urban planning system in China started with construction-oriented planning in the 1950s under the influence of the Soviet model, and this course was changed after China broke up with Russia. In the early stage of reform and opening up, urban planning system was reshaped with reference to development-oriented planning and was later mixed with regulationoriented planning at the end of 1980s. Although the key features, contents, and methods in those three paradigms were all absorbed and played an important role in the rapid urbanisation of China, urban planning system is still constructionoriented at its core, notwithstanding the attempts and pilot programmes of urban spatial development strategic plan, territorial planning of cities and counties, and the integration of multi-modal planning. Based on the analysis on the evolution course of urban planning system in China and its functions under given political and socio-economic landscape, this paper reveals the institutions of urban planning in China in different times, its unique development path, as well as the root causes.

?This paper employs one contextual framework and two main threads while unraveling the evolution of China’s urban and rural planning thoughts since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The development of China’s urban planning thoughts in the past seventy years can be divided into five stages, namely: urban planning as the tool for the spatial deployment of industries; urban planning under an ultra-leftist ideology; urban planning admist the science-based rationalistic methodology; urban planning in a growth-dictates-all environment; and urban planning in the circumstance of the national governance restructuring. The past 70 years saw urban planning thought in China evolved with many changes and certain constants: what changed is the role of urban-rural planning and the conception of its value, as well as the theories and techniques in urban-rural planning; whereas the pragmatic path remained a constant.

Regional planning in China constitutes an integral part of the global history of regional planning. The evolution of Chinese regional planning theories and practices should be understood, interpreted, and compared in a broader, international context. As an important tool for regional governance, the approach to regional planning will inevitably bear characteristics that are distinctive to a specific country and time; whereas the dynamics in the evolution of regional planning theories and practices also comes from adapting to specific development stages in certain countries and regions. Over the last 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, while being exposed to the influence of global theories and practices, China has seen its regional planning in constant adjustments to seek better alignment between the development stage, planning thought, and practical actions. Along with the continuous advancing of China’s modernization and urbanization, the understanding of development stage gets clearer, the competition among different interest groups becomes increasingly tough, and the practical actions get more diversified. With that, China’s grasp of trends and patterns in regional planning has been gradually improved. This paper aims to figure out the correlations between urbanization in China and in the world, especially in Western developed countries, to relate different stages to one another. Therefore, Chinese planning thought and practical actions over the past seven decades can be reviewed with a frame of reference, with which China’s response to international trends in various stages can be evaluated. As conclusions, this paper establishes the correlations between development stages, planning thoughts, and practical actions. Furthermore, based on the judgment on China’s urbanization trends, this paper identifies the directions for innovation on China’s regional planning.

As the carrier of all living and production activities, land is the basic object and land use is the essential content of a variety of planning. Land management system directly determines a series of significant issues such as the supply of urban and rural construction land, the land use efficiency, the allocation of land value appreciation, and so on. Therefore, it influences the philosophy and implementation of planning. In China, there are diverse plans of urban and rural land use managed by multiple agencies. In the early years after the foundation of the PRC, land was allocated by plans with no charge. After the Reform and Opening-Up, paid use of land and land market was introduced, followed up by the establishment of a land use planning system including territorial planning, urban and rural planning, and land use planning. Recently, exploration of building a unified territorial/spatial planning system is undergoing since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee. The evolution of planning manifests the modernization of state governance system, from direct control of land by the state, to the decentralized management of development rights under the separation of land ownership and use rights, to the central-local two-layer management of land development rights in the context of protecting resources and environment, all the way to the unified management of land development rights under the Ecological Civilization. On the basis of reviewing the evolution of urban and rural land use planning in the past 70 years, this paper explores the reforms of the land management system with Chinese characteristics and their impacts on urban and rural land use planning. This paper explains the evolution path of urban and rural land use planning and interprets the transition of planning focus of “construction management—asset management—resource management—ecology management”, as well as the corresponding streamlining process of governments functions.

Taking into account the diversification, ambiguous context and lack of knowledge of citizen participation in smart theory research area, this paper analyzes the evolution of typical attitudes on smart city theory from the view of “roles the citizens play during the smart city construction”. Then, it puts forward an integrative framework of smart city theory based on the “ICT maturity-urban development needs-tasks” dimension, based on which it proposes that (1) human recognition is the source of driving force for smart city construction; (2) smart city is a system of systems; (3) smart city construction is a continuously deepening continuum; (4) the construction contents should experience three stages which include infrastructure construction, institution transformation and citizen innovation; (5) the market-based business model is a strong support for the healthy and sustainable development of smart cities. Next, according to the above evolution analysis and research proposals, this paper advances the developing directions as well as puts forward some related suggestions: (1) the researchers should keep an active contact with the practitioners in order to promote the theories’ guiding roles on practices; (2) innovative research perspective, constructing a smart city theoretical system according to the “bottom-up” construction model; (3) innovate the method of acquiring data; (4) focus on the citizen participation field; (5) pay more attention to innovate the business models of smart cites construction.

The popularization of block system in China was aimed at improving the street connectivity, with the method of breaking through the branches of streets. Grasping the overall situation of measurements is the precondition of improving the street connectivity in the process of construction. In order to fully understand the research progress of the street connectivity worldwide, this paper summarizes the frequently-used measurements of evaluating the street connectivity by sorting out and analyzing relevant literatures. We also point out some existing shortcomings and outlook the future research trend. Block section measurement is considered as an adaptive and feasible way to help popularize block system. Following the original intention of popularizing block system and realizing the difficulties of practice, this paper emphasizes the necessity of introducing related regulations and setting a threshold value. Two blocks of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, are selected to verify the feasibility of the block section measurement. This paper further discusses how to effectively guarantee the connectivity of block system by using a threshold value in the process of transformation and construction.