Most urban-oriented research and policy design in China is devoted to new mega cities and vast urban concentrations. But urbanisation processes across the country are much more complex and ambiguous, affecting both urban centres and the former rural countryside.
The project aims to build a better understanding of the urban-rural constellation and interdependencies that are emerging along China's vast urbanisation corridors, and which can no longer be described through traditional binaries of 'urban' and 'rural'. The region Huangyan-Taizhou, part of the Chinese 'prefectural-level city' Taizhou, will be examined as an exemplary case study and learning context: a rapidly urbanising region where diverse and seemingly contradictory transformation processes take place simultaneously. Goal is to develop new stakeholder oriented planning-governance instruments. IOER part focuses on the ecosystem services dynamics in the urban rural gradient.