The establishment of spatial planning system and related reforms have entered the critical stage in China. How to effectively carry out the coordination of planning is a key issue and needs to be strengthened in related empirical researches. Based on the introduction of latest trends and concepts in the practices of international spatial planning, this paper combines the institutional background and the technical characteristics in China’s spatial planning firstly, and sorts out main experience of planning coordination from the international practices from five aspects of policies, indicators, regulating lines, land use and facilities. Facing the actual reform needs of China’s spatial planning system, it is proposed to (1) take into account of the spatial governance demands of different levels while maintaining the central intervention, (2) to combine rigidity and flexibility so as to optimize the governance structure of coordination, (3) to strengthen the construction of the law and policy system, (4) to use tools such as policy guidance and social governance in order to achieve the modernization of spatial governance.

Providing a convincing prediction for the urban future remains a challenge in planning research, discipline development and spatial practices. This paper reviews the progress in the research practice of urban models, evaluates the mainstream methods (i.e., macro, micro and integrated models) and highlights their strengths and weaknesses. Based on the identified trends in socioeconomic development and technological innovation, the challenges and opportunities of urban modelling are summarised against the backdrop of emerging big data, evolving technologies and behaviours, diversified policy needs, and growing complexity sciences. Furthermore, the future research directions of urban modelling are proposed, including the refinement of models, representation of technical and behavioural changes, model integrations across spatial scales and urban sectors, and ex-post evaluations and model updates. The findings from this research will help promote urban development theories and planning practices, since the improvements in urban models can establish a more convincing evidence base to address urban issues and support plan-making and evaluation.

This paper explains the background of Japan’s unitary system of government and local autonomy, traces back the evolution of Japan’s planning legislation and spatial planning system, and analyzes relevant issues such as the division of powers, horizontal coordination and hierarchical transmission, and the legal guarantee for the operation of the planning system. On this basis, combined with the background of the modernization of national governance system and governance capacity, this paper discusses some enlightenment to the reform and institutional construction of China’s spatial planning, including improving the system of laws and regulations, standardizing the compilation and implementation of spatial planning; the planning authority of governments at all levels should be set reasonably, emphasizing the transmission at different levels and stimulating the governance vitality at the grassroots level; simplifying the content of the master plan, clarifying the power of compilation and review, and attaching importance to the coordination mechanism of the plan, ect.

Logistics and related freight movements is an essential part of urban economic activities. It is highly relevant to both land use and transport planning interventions. Therefore, it is the area where Land Use and Transport Interaction (LUTI) model has been extensively applied. The earliest freight model was developed in the 1970s. Since then there are more than 100 freight models have been developed. However, the application of freight model in practice is very limited, freight modelling is focusing on production and consumption. Transport logistics hubs that are primarily used for distribution seem to be not considered adequately in most freight models. Those hubs are crucial for freight movements. Failure to capture the distribution channel adequately will result in underestimating the goods movement significantly.This paper firstly reviews how freight modelling have been studied systematically. Then using the UK national freight model developed by City Science as an example to depict how the City Science Nation Freight Model (CSNFM) was developed in detail. In the final section, the paper is concluded with a number of suggestions on developing freight models in China and directions for future research.

Collaborative planning can effectively coordinate the interest conflicts among multiple stakeholders in urban green space. The collaborative planning of urban garden in Vienna of Austria is one of the examples and has made remarkable achievements through nearly 40 years’ development. This paper takes it as the case study and explores the whole planning process including planning preparation, implementation and feedback stages in the way of actual investigation and interview. It finds the features of collaborative planning, including multiple stakeholders’ participation, flexible space use and diversified value realization. Then it analyzes the implementation mechanism of this collaborative planning. Firstly, through the cooperation of government, government organizations, professional teams and urban public, the collective decision-making of planning is ensured. Secondly, the government empowers the cooperative organizations to form a negotiation platform to coordinate the “top-down” and “bottom-up” processes of planning. Thirdly, the“onion ring principle” is adopted to refine the cooperation members of urban public and to solve the core issues. Fourthly, the methods of public participation are broadened to ensure the collective information shared during the whole process. This paper summarizes the implementation mechanism of Vienna collaborative planning on urban gardening in the end, providing suggestions and references for Chinese urban green space planning in a collaborative way.

The increasing agglomeration and mobility of various elements in urban areas intensifies the vulnerability of cities when facing with both natural and man-made disasters. Based on years of experience of urban disaster prevention, Japan has achieved great efficiency in disaster prevention with the three-level disaster prevention life circle, which is of great significance for improving urban safety system in China. This paper reviews the experience and deficiency of disaster prevention life circle in Japan, and puts forward the idea of safety life circle. Combining different contexts of locality and mobility, safety life circle gives consideration to both regular and irregular risks and, therefore, could satisfy multi-contextual and individual needs of citizens. Finally, we suggest that safety life circle should start from four different aspects: spatio-temporal planning, facility planning, safety rating and society planning.

Traditional planning methods are difficult to be effectively applied to marine spatial planning due to the diversity of spatial types, multiple governing bodies and complex systems. Cumulative Effects Assessment and Management, as a tool for comprehensive assessment of multi-system and multi-factor relationships, is being applied to the marine spatial planning of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. This paper sorts out the background and evolution of cumulative impact assessment and management in the marine spatial planning of the Great Barrier Reef, and expounds its specific application from the perspectives of technical methods and operational support. By summarizing the characteristics of the cumulative impact assessment and management practice of the Great Barrier Reef from mechanism, method, object and process, proposals are suggested for the assessment, compilation and management of China’s marine spatial planning.

Facing extreme climate change and rapid urban development, land-use management can effectively mitigate social and economic impacts from flood disasters as a key approach. In order to achieve the coordinative, prospective and adaptive development within high flood risk floodplain, the comprehensive mechanism of applying land-use management into both flood risk and spatial planning system needs to be optimized. Based on challenges facing coastal cities in China, the paper illustrates New York City as a case for sorting out experience with great significance and feasibility, such as the coordinated framework of policy and planning, dynamic assessment of flood risk zones, multi-functional management tools, and regional practices. Therefore, the paper recommends that consolidating the disaster-responded capacity of national spatial planning, building hazard-affected mechanism within high risk floodplain, and improving the coordinative framework for planning and stakeholder to provide land use management system in the context of spatial planning and risk controlling, so as to inspire resilience decision-making processes for coastal cities in China.