The New Trends of Spatial Planning Research and Practice in Developed Countries and Their Inspirations to China
国外空间规划研究与实践的新动向 及对我国的启示

Spatial planning is an essential tool for sustainable development, and will evolve as the social reality changes. After 1990s, rapid social and economic developments have made the world more complex and uncertain, and thus resulted in the evolvement of spatial planning. Criticism on rational planning and traditional spatial planning, advocacy of sustainable development strategy, and institutional reforms in economic, social and environmental management make people realize that spatial planning should be a strategic and holistic tool for space governance and sustainable development, rather than a departmental one for land use management; should focus on the building of consensus among different stakeholders, rather than analyzing the feasibility and seqence of space development; and should aim at development rather than e-conomic growth. New trends of spatial planning in developed countries have been emerging since 1990s: a) redistributing powers and functions of spatial planning according to governance theory; b) inclusive participating in the whole process of spatial planning formation and implementation; c) stressing cooperation of departmental framework and integration of different scalar spatial planning resources and tools; d) emphasizing on integrating environmental concerns into spatial planning; and e) formulating more flexible spatial plans and bringing more flexibility to implementations of them. The inspirations to spatial planning practice in China are given as follows: a) harmonizing strategic frameworks and action schemes; b) formulating participation mechanisms relevant to China; c) paying great attention to flexibility of plans as well as to their binding characteristics; d) intensifying spatial planning in regional level; and e) highlighting the public management function of spatial planning, and integrating it with market instruments.