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Collaborative Planning in China: Authoritarian Institutions, New Media, Power Relations, and Public Spheres

Project description

Rethinking collaborative planning in China

Collaborative planning has become an effective means to address conflicts of interest in urban renewal and environmental management in China. However, the egalitarian principles of collaborative planning theory call into question its validity in China. The EU-funded CoChina project will examine the practices of collaborative planning in the country and identify the challenges to the assumptions of the theory, aiming to explore novel reconceptualisation routes. The project's work will lead to a new understanding of collaborative planning in China, introducing new aspects of the theory to make it more suitable for authoritarian contexts.

Objective

Collaborative planning has become an effective means to address conflicts of interest in urban renewal and environmental management in China. However, the egalitarian principles that ground collaborative planning theory call into question its validity in China. The theory emphasizes consensus building in which various stakeholders come together for dialogue to address controversial issues. It rests on three assumptions: democratic institutions, neutral power and communicative rationality. These assumptions, which are often debated in the Western context, should clearly be questioned in the Chinese context, due to authoritarian institutions and the challenging nature of power relations. Therefore, the aim of my project is to examine the practices of collaborative planning in China and identify the challenges to the assumptions of the theory. I will develop three novel tracks for examination and reconceptualization. The first will analyze how Chinese political and planning systems, social capital and culture affect the interactive processes. The second will apply network theory and social network analysis to analyze various types of power relations between government, planners, civil society and citizens. The third will identify various forms of online public spheres and how they interact with offline public spheres to affect communicative and agonistic approaches to collaborative planning. The research will employ an innovative mixed methods approach combining critical discourse analysis, data mining, computer-assisted content analysis, and social network analysis to research a wide range of case studies.

My project will lead to a new understanding of collaborative planning in China, and a reconceptualization of the collaborative planning theory to make it suitable for authoritarian contexts.

Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2020-STG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 500 000,00
Address
HEIDELBERGLAAN 8
3584 CS Utrecht
Netherlands

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 500 000,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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