Possibilities and Limitations of Chinese Eco-City Development

This introductory chapter intends to locate the ensuing critical discussion about Chinese people-oriented eco-city development with a set of broader contemporary issues regarding its suitable development orientation (e.g. technological showcase or liveable habitat that people enjoy living, planning slogan or practical project) as the research background, for the purpose of justifying its significance as an object of social sustainability. Moreover, it outlines both research aim and research questions which have guided main research methods and analysis, being followed by research contributions and an overview of structure and methodology.

In order to better examine and analyse impacts of humanism on the long-term and sustainable eco-city development, it is of great importance to understand leading theories and main evolution trends from both humanistic and ecological perspectives to guide the concept of humanistic planning under the idea of ecology. This chapter provides the overall understanding of the humanistic planning—Ecological Urbanism regards people-oriented concept from the holistic disciplinary view, which ‘considers all factors which make up physical, social and economic needs of a community and relates them to the greater environment’ ((Rogers, R., Cities for a Small Planet. Westview Press, <publisher-loc>, 1998), p.53). Garden City provides a foundation for critically exploring the relationship between people and place. Then it moves to another key concept outside urban planning discipline, Environmental Psychology, to discuss the interaction between people and physical environment from psychological perspectives, such as people’s needs and their behaviours. By adopting Gibson’s affordance theory, this research argues the environment itself is meaningful and consists of opportunities for people’s behaviours.

On the one hand, based on the analysis of interdisciplinary research, this chapter aims to illustrate why people’s needs and behaviours matter, which will be the basis for creating the possible improved design process that can better integrate the consideration of people’s needs and their behaviours. On the other hand, this chapter uses a new-type conceptual model to understand human-centred design in a historical context, critically discussing what kind of people’s needs should eco-city meet, both physically and psychologically. It is new because this model reveals the design evolution, from functionality and usability to the higher-level desirability, which has responded to the hierarchy of human needs. Also, it has responded to one of viewpoints of this study, psychological needs matter in design process.

In the scope of the first half of this chapter, the initial section aims to give an overview of the emerging eco-city concept in China and related planning policies to guide or contextualize eco-city planning. Then, it delineates some general information about the SSTEC project, including its geographical and political conditions and its bilateral supervisory management framework, which are basic characteristics that can affect further data analysis.

The scope of the first half of this chapter firstly discusses reasons for choosing four research sites to narrow down the analytical scope of people–place relationship within the SSTEC case. Then, it introduces the evaluation about people’s activities to lay the groundwork for further analysis about how people measure good and poor spatial environment by their behaviours. The scope of the second half of this chapter then identifies what kinds of people’s needs should eco-city meet, both physically and psychologically. Based upon research findings about how people’s behaviours matter in the people–place relationship, sense of safety (psychological aspect) and social infrastructure (physical aspect) have been discussed as two forms of behavioural connection between people and place in this chapter, which has been deemed as two important leverage points of eco-city’s place-making process in the next chapter.

This chapter aims to respond to the original intention of doing this research—identifying limitations and possibilities of current Chinese eco-city development in order to make its planning and design be more humanistic. Thus, in this chapter, it critically explores some constraints on promoting the behavioural connection between people and place as well as some planning initiatives about people-centred approaches, to respond to reasons for the existence of conceptual-practical gap identified in the previous chapter. In addition, through discussions about existing traditional eco-city’s design process, possible improved design process of recommendation for practice has been put forward to demonstrate the implication of behavioural connection between people and place in the eco-city planning development.

This chapter mainly focuses on summarizing key findings referring to each research question, and applies the interdisciplinary theoretical framework into the empirical-evidence-based case study. It also aims to analyse some original research contributions from theoretical, methodological and practical levels. Moreover, this chapter critically explores two evaluations about limitations of this research, and the need for future research in the similar field of academic study.