Models of Inter-city Cooper ation and Its Theoretical Implications: An Empirical Study on the Yangtze River Delta
长江三角洲城市合作模式及其理论框架分析

Inter-city cooperation in the Yangtze River Delta region is a new phenomenon and has received much governmental and scholarly attention in recent years. This paper examines inter-city cooperation from partnership perspective. In this study, three typical cases of inter-city cooperation, Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou Urban Region Planning, the Forum for the Coordination of Urban Economy of Yangtze River Delta Region and Jiangyin Economic Development Zone in Jingjiang are selected to examine three types of partnership arrangements, namely, hierarchical partnership, spontaneous partnership and hybrid partnership. This research applies the partnership approach to regional scale based on the Yangtze River delta's experiences. The research focus of this paper is the effectiveness of three types of inter-city cooperation. Through tracing the process of partnership formation and investigating stakeholder interactions, this paper argues that the effectiveness of inter-city cooperation depends on cooperation mechanism, the process of cooperation, the nature and scope of the cooperation, and the partner selection and roles of actors in partnership formation.