Sustainable living in a Chinese city. Analysis and support for market-conscious urban planning

Abstract

In the transition from a state-led industrial to a market-driven post-industrial urban economy, China’s planners are facing challenges in building sustainable living environment for the rapidly increasing and wealthier urban population.Citizens are the end-users of the sustainable city. Their preferences generate the market demands for real estate and transport, which are the basis to promote sustainable planning in the market. To achieve sustainability goals in China, planners need to adopt a more market-conscious approach and communicate with policymakers and other stakeholders to implement sustainable policies. The aim of this book is to support planners to engage in market-conscious planning by understanding the market demands for sustainable living and the market outcomes of sustainable planning interventions city wide. We stress three major challenges in the strive towards sustainable living in Chinese cities: green dwelling attributes, accessibility to activities by public transport, and the environmental quality in neighbourhoods. We chose the city of Nanjing China as our study area which is a typical Chinese city facing the three sustainable challenges. First, we assess the relative amenity value of accessibility and neighbourhood quality by integrating geographical theories and detailed spatial measures into a hedonic price model. Second, we employ a conjoint model to estimate the willingness to pay for green dwellings versus accessibility to metros and jobs and neighbourhood quality by different socio-economic groups in Nanjing, China. Third, we employ the means-end theory to test whether environmental awareness matters in green home-buying. Fourth, we use the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to analyse the extent to which developers and planners understand the valuation of green apartment attributes by residents. Fifth, we examine two different planning interventions which aim to improve the air quality in Nanjing – the extension of the metro system and the redevelopment of heavy industry sites – and presents a planning support methodology to simulate the effects of these interventions on the housing and land markets. Last but not least, we provide planners with a methodology for estimating green housing potential for various socio-economic groups in Nanjing, with reference to their green housing preferences and budgets. In general, we find that sustainable planning interventions have potentials to create monetary value for both investors and end-users. Such interventions will have a very widespread impact on the land market, well beyond the sites directly affected by the initial plan. Although there are significant geographical and cultural differences between China and the West, when coming up with sustainable living, people in the world share similar expectations and preferences. In building sustainable cities, the notion of health will play a pivotal role at this moment. And it is essential that affordability and subsidies are taken into account in building a healthy city. Our research also shows that the market for sustainability will not develop automatically. A bottom-up policy might be an alternative option to get support both from the market and society. This requires a collaboration of various actors including the planning bureau, the environmental bureau, the land-use bureau, the transportation bureau, developers, and residents.