Logical Analysis And Compilation Breakthrough Of China’s Regional Planning Predicament

In the context of governance modernization and planning transformation,regional planning should have become the acting point for overall and comprehensive governance,but it has shown persistent recurring practice puzzles.For example,China’s regional planning has the characteristics of "wave-like" evolution.The "wave" appeared in different forms in different periods,but always stagnated or dissipated quickly.In the new “wave”,the regional planning seemed to learn from the previous round.The corresponding content has been revised,but new problems are constantly emerging.Regional planning requires comprehensive consideration of the region.However,in practice,elements are considered with great effort overall,but large amounts of content stay in the text without implementation.The intention of making a planning is to coordinate the region,but the competition inside is always difficult to deal with,making the planning trapped in an embarrassing state of "set up its own stage to sing its own play".With the change of government departments and their competition for administrative power,plans of the same area are compiled by different departments repeatedly,while the implementation effect has not been improved.Moreover,the planning itself has become a new competition form between the departments.There are many more problems mentioned above.Meanwhile,the views to these problems of existing studies tend to focus on the discussion of institutional issues,which have hardly change in the past two decades.It seems that the relevant legal systems and administrative mechanisms continue to lag behind,while the suggestion from the research has gone nowhere.Now the question arises spontaneously: what is the real problem of the poor implementation of regional planning? How can regional planning not only take into account all the elements,but also be effective? Does the repeated reproduction of these phenomena mean that there is a shared logic behind them,like the fundamental problem is not being recognized,or the solution is not precise enough,so that the problem is repeatedly presented in new forms?The existing studies on regional planning focuses on four aspects: planning evolution,implementation and corporation,the inside gaming and foreign cases.For a long time,due to the limitation of government department function and related administrative systems,research is either based on a grand context or focusing on specific cases,while the methodology research for regional planning itself has always been insufficient.At the time of institutional reforms and planning mergers,it is necessary to reorganize and conduct general theoretical research on this.To systematically reveal the predicament of China’s regional planning requires deepening the hidden logic behind it.Based on the Theory of Holism,this article attempts to re-examine these predicaments through in-depth analysis of phenomena,taking the planning generating as the anchor.It first clarifies the status quo of China’s regional planning as the research basis.It then carry out a multi-logic analysis framework based on the inspiration of governance theory and policy dynamic analysis model,combined with the practice of China’s regional planning,so as to systematically explore the real logic behind the predicaments.Finally,the logical framework is "deconstructed",and a "simultaneity" logical process hypothesis is proposed as a breakthrough in planning compilation of the predicament,and followed with the case of San Francisco Bay Area planning,which itself being explanation and application of the hypothesis.It is believed that the confusion of predicaments of China’s regional planning is due to the misunderstanding from partial and linear thinking.Planning as an intervention should conform to the law of things itself,which require overall and simultaneous thinking.To break through the planning predicament,one requires a public collaboration process of exhaustive guessing and testing throughout the planning.The different of regional planning from the other planning is its flexibility and initiative under non-mandatory conditions.Planning itself should be always consider as a method instead of a goal.And its compilation process should be a part of governance.Chapters are arranged as follows:Chapter one is an introduction.It expounds the research background,questions and significance,combines the existing studies to propose the direction,and set the research methods and framework.Chapter two is an observation of the status quo of China’s regional planning,from a systematic induction of historical evolution,pedigree status,and both problems and solutions that have been considered by existing studies,as a basis for the following research.Chapter three takes planning generating as the anchor.With the perspective of governance and inspiration from the dynamic analysis model of policy,it proposes a triple logical analysis framework including technology,discourse and power.Chapter four takes the triple logic as the main line,elaborates the potential logical challenges and predicament of regional planning,and reveals its practical tendency,combined with the China’s regional planning practice.Chapter five "deconstructs" the triple framework and proposes a hypothesis for planning breakthroughs: a public collaboration process of exhaustive guessing and testing throughout the planning based on the logic of "simultaneity".Chapter six takes the San Francisco Bay Area plan as a case to give a concrete interpretation of the hypothesis,and put forward the enlightenment for China’s regional planning.The transformation of the San Francisco Bay Area planning itself is also a prove of the logical analysis and hypothesis in this article.Chapter seven summarizes the conclusions of this article,and points out the inadequacies of the study.The whole thesis contains about 52 000 words,31 pictures and charts.