Bulletin n. 3/2015
January 2016
INDICE
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Dai Guowen
    The impact of policy networks on the urbanisation around High-Speed Railway stations in China: the case of Wuhan
    in Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy , Volume 33, Issue 3, June ,  2015 ,  533-551
    In this paper I address the nationwide impulse to use new High-Speed Railway (HSR) stations to catalyse the urban extension of Chinese cities. I aim to unfold four modalities of actor relations in the process of urbanisation around the HSR stations— that is, the vertical intergovernmental relations, horizontal intergovernmental relations, government-market relations, and government-society relations. By introducing the network perspective, I demonstrate how the particular policy networks in China shape actor relations in policy games, and correspondingly impact on the outcomes of such urban policies. The new subcentre in Wuhan is taken as an in-depth case study. I identify key policy networks as the institutional settings, and analyse the role of such policy networks in the key policy games: location choice, infrastructure integration, functional diversity, and the quality of environmental and public space. Finally, as a consequence, the characteristic coordination problems that yield the policy games of urbanisation are characterised, which concern: tension between central and local competences of decision making; cross-jurisdiction separation; the overdominant role of governments and their opportunist behaviours; and, finally, lack of public participation.
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