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| GOVERNANCE OF URBAN AGGLOMERATIONS: A CASE OF SHAOXING |
| GU Chao-lin, WANG Ying |
| School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China |
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Abstract Urban agglomeration, an overall trans-administrative boundary urban region constituting of various functionally interconnected units, is the kind of spatial organization appeared that the city develops into a mature stage. As the idea of ‘Civil Society’ prevails and the government and market fail to play their role, recent years have seen governance's rise as an inevitable choice to solve the failure of market and government occurred in the development of urban agglomeration. Governance is a kind of strategy that is balancing and reallocating powers between the government and the market. Therefore, the introduction of governance in urban agglomeration planning and the research on the relationships, operating mechanisms, interest conflicts and negotiating models of development units of different spaces in the metropolitan area are of great significance in promoting the establishment of a long-term regional cooperation mechanism, coordinating the urban development, improving management efficiencies and many other areas. This paper firstly gives a conclusion of the theories and models concerning the governing of urban agglomerations. There are basically four models, i.e. the government-centered model of governance, government-induced model of governance, multiple organizations/stakeholders-involved model of governance, private mandatory/induced model of governance. On the basis of drawing upon the practices from both abroad and China, this paper takes Shaoxing as an example to put forward three governing proposals, including to build up a metropolitan cooperation platform, to replace the concept of administrative regions with the concept of functional region (economic region), and to create a competition and cooperation mechanism. Based on the above mentioned proposals, this paper puts forward six methods, namely, building up a metropolitan area with multiple centers, founding a specific negotiating organization between cities, establishing non-official regional communication mechanism, enforcing the cultivation of small cities, raising regional cooperation funds, fiscal aid and tax transfers. All these six methods are used in order to have a governance framework for urban agglomerations suited to our development situation.
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Received: 22 October 2012
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2013, Vol. 28 
