How Can China Achieve Economic Transition with the Featured Town Concept? A Case Study of Hangzhou from an Evolutionary Perspective

《How Can China Achieve Economic Transition with the Featured Town Concept? A Case Study of Hangzhou from an Evolutionary Perspective》

打印

作者: Jiajia Gong;Luuk Boelens;Chen Hua

来源: URBAN POLICY AND RESEARCH,Vol.38,Issue3,P.249-261

语言: 英文

关键字: China,economic transition,featured town,evolutionary economic geography,innovation,Alibaba

作者单位: Department of Regional and Urban Planning, Zhejiang University , Hangzhou, China ;Centre for Mobility and Spatial Planning, Ghent University , Ghent, Belgium

摘要: The Chinese government launched the Feature Town to promote economic transition. But what the concept of Featured Town implies is still unclear and mostly conceived as a regular top-down policy measure. This paper argues that the concept would find its meaning only when enhanced by the business and civic society’s participation. We employed relational and (co)evolutionary economic geography to identify its role in economic transition. We examined how the leading firm Alibaba co-evolved with Hangzhou city. We concluded that Featured Town is a complex adaptive system (CAS) where firms, agents, and institutes co-evolve with each other, revitalising urban geography, as that it is remoulded by the geography itself. 中国政府推出特色小镇是为了促进经济转型. 但是特色城镇的概念意味着什么还不清楚，大部分被认为是一个常规的自上而下的政策措施. 本文认为，只有在商业和公民社会的参与下，这一概念才会找到它的意义. 我们使用关系经济地理学和(共同)进化经济地理学来确定其在经济转型中的作用. 我们研究了领先的阿里巴巴是如何与杭州共同发展的. 我们的结论是，特色城镇是一个复杂的适应性系统(CAS)，在这里，企业、代理商和机构共同进化，振兴城市地理，因为它是由地理本身重塑的. KEYWORDS: China, economic transition, featured town, evolutionary economic geography, innovation, Alibaba Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Pengyue Guo, Jia Zhang and the Anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions for revisions. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).