Studies On Procedure Control Of Urban Planning

With the development of China’s economy, urban planning has become anindispensable means of government management. Although urban planning hasenjoyed a rapid development along with the acceleration of urbanization, manyproblems are seen in this field. The most prominent one is the lagging of legalprovisions, among which the lack of procedural requirements is the most seriousproblem. Thus, it results in the big mismatch between theoretical research and actualoperation, which leads to a series of problems such as the economic development, thesocial stability and the legitimate rights and interests of citizens are jeopardized. Theforward-looking nature of urban planning has its own advantages, but n a countrywhere legal provisions are insufficient, it is bound to bring a series of disadvantagessuch as making the urban planning too broad, unstable or infeasible, etc, which areundoubtedly in contrary to the goal of building a country under the rule of law inChina and the requirements of implementing administrative management according tolaw. Therefore, in order to make the government implement urban planning in alegitimate and reasonable manner, the most important issue is to set proceduralprovisions for it. This paper is divided into five parts:In the first part, the basic theoretical analysis of urban planning is presented,mainly including the introduction of the concept, nature and classification of urbanplanning. As the understanding of the basic concept and the nature of the object ofstudy is a must for any theoretical research, on the basis of the definition of urbanplanning from the most authoritative legal documents, combining with the domestictheoretical research on urban planning at present, the author’s own understanding ofthe nature of urban planning is proposed. Then, the theoretical analysis of theclassification of urban planning is focused. Urban planning is classified according tothe strength of the constraint force as well as legal grounds, which provide theoreticalfoundation for the discussion in latter parts.In the second part, the existing problems and causes for them are mainlyanalyzed. Firstly, on the basis of the the legislative status quo of the legal provisionsof urban planning, the existing problems in this field are clearly found, such as lackof legal norms, mismatch with the reality, the lack of procedural requirements, theinsufficient public participation in both breadth and depth, the discretion lack of control,etc;Secondly, the causes of the problems are analyzed from both the subjectiveaspect and objective aspect.In the third part, the procedure control experience and the implement methods ofprocedural provisions of urban planning in foreign nations are introduced. Then, bysummarizing the advantages of other nations in this regard, some enlightenment isdrawn, which will offer reference for the improvement of procedure control of urbanplanning in China.In the fourth part, the necessity of procedure control of urban planning isdiscussed. It is not easy to regulate urban planning according to procedural provisionsfor it has a series of characteristics different from other planning. As no specialprocedure law is made at present, the necessity of it is discussed from three aspects,listing as the need of discretion control, the need of the status quo of urban planning,the need modern rule of law.In the fifth part, on the basis of the analysis above, the author elaborate on howto improve the procedural provisions from the aspects of what should be included inlegislative model and the procedure control of urban planning provisions, includingthe selection of dispersive legislative model on the basis of concentrated legislativemodel, the procedure control taking the formation, the confirmation, the changes, thenullification, as well as the protection of the reliance interests into consideration.Finally, this paper discusses the accountability mechanisms in the whole process ofurban planning,and the judicial review of the urban planning.