By Xuan Xiaowei, Research Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.154, 2018 (Total 5429) 2018-9-14

Abstract: The approaches of constructing and improving China’s spatial planning system are raised as follows: 1. We need to clearly clarify the spatial authority and spatial control priorities of the central and local governments according to the layer of spatial planning, and ensure that government at each level has its own power for planning; 2. Spatial affairs that fall within the scope of the central government’s authority need to be managed by the central government in order to achieve full coverage of all links from decision-making to policy implementation; 3. Spatial affairs that fall within the scope of the common responsibilities of the central and local authorities need to be clarified and the central government’s control over local governments need to be changed from target-constraint to standard-constraint as well as from result-constraint to behavior-constraint; 4. Relevant laws and regulations and supporting policies need to be established and improved. China’s spatial planning system is composed of “land spatial planning” and “special spatial planning” of governments at all levels, forming a constraint operation mechanism at both horizontal and vertical levels. The horizontal mechanism focuses on the problem of spatial control between different functional departments under the governments at the same level, while the vertical mechanism realizes the vertical constraint between the governments at different levels conducted by the certain functional departments with corresponding special spatial planning.

Key words: spatial planning system, approaches, suggestions