Wei Zheng

The University of Manchester · School of Environment and Development

Unlike most city centers in countries that pioneer European high-speed rail (HSR) lines, HSR stations in China have mainly been developed in suburban areas. The rationale for peripherally located HSR stations is due to development costs and intentions to speed up urbanization and develop new suburbs. However, it remains unknown whether the HSR-led...

Since the 2000s, there has been an increasing number of returning and migrant farmers across China. In 2012, China initiated a program for fostering professional farmers, which has caused greater changes for farmers and led to an agricultural shift towards commercial production. Migration has been recognized as a crucial factor affecting the divers...

Despite being a global urban policy laboratory with a diversity of research topics and case studies being reported, we still do not have a holistic understanding of urbanisation across different parts of China. We therefore pose three pertinent questions for discussion in this commentary: whether Chinese urbanisation research has reached a plateau...

This report provides a global synthesis of evidence on justice in transitions to low-carbon energy systems and processes of urbanization. While cities are important sites of energy consumption, analysis of urbanisation offers explanations of how social and spatial injustices are created through the building, fuelling, feeding, and funding of cities...

Rapid urbanisation has resulted in a series of urban sustainability challenges. Green infrastructure, with its associated emphasis on multifunctionality, has been advocated by scholars and practitioners alike as a key part of responses seeking the transition to sustainable urban environments. In support of this, a number of assessment frameworks ha...

The global urbanization has produced a number of metropolises with complex urban spatial structures. Compared with monocentric cities, these metropolises typically have multiple urban centers/subcenters (UCSs). The formation and development of UCSs is driven by physical, economic and human-activity-related factors. The planning of UCSs can signific...

This paper examines the socio-economic and geopolitical outcomes associated with infrastructure development across multiple scales. Starting from the premise that planetary socio-technical transformations in this vein have distinctly national drivers, we focus on the urban agency of Chinese-led investment. The paper explores how different forms of...

There has been limited research examining the impact of the top-down and quota-oriented farmland preservation policies on urban land expansion at the city level in China. This paper aims to narrow this gap, particularly focusing on the policies of prime farmland preservation quota and farmland conversion quota. A multilevel modeling approach was ap...

In recent years, the increasing segregation and fragmentation of transport service provisions, evidenced between urban and rural areas, and between different administrative divisions, has been concerned in metropolitan areas. The analysis of the spatial configuration of urban bus networks is important to understand the spatial problems and relevant...

There are many studies examining the school district housing premium, and conclusions regarding the premium are quite diverse. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct an integrated analysis of the relevant literatures to determine the factors causing the premium, and to explore logically the relationship between housing prices and high quality basic...

With the rapid process of urbanisation in China, the challenges facing cities with regard to urban fabric, urban function, and human living conditions are enormous. Urban renewal provides opportunities to address these challenges and realise sustainable development. This study proposes a framework for integrating an indicator evaluation system and...

This study adopts a spatial perspective to analyse the complex commuting patterns of the Beijing metropolitan region. By combining measures of the built environment, neighbourhood characteristics and development time periods, a four-fold neighbourhood classification was derived by cluster analysis to reflect different urbanisation contexts. Commuti...

With rapid urbanization and suburbanization in China, there is clear evidence of the decoupling of home-work locations in cities which is in contrast to the socialist danwei system where workers were housed in workplace compounds. This paper examines the diverse commuting patterns of suburban neighbourhoods in the Beijing metropolitan region. The r...

The global environmental agenda since the 1990s has seen a boom in using sustainability indicators to evaluate environmental impact and capacity. Based on the experience and lessons learnt internationally over the last 25 years, this chapter critically examines the nature, application and challenges of adopting indicator-based approaches to plannin...

Rapid outward expansion of urban land in many of China’s cities has resulted in the production of spatially diverse suburban areas, including newly developed residential complexes and the incorporation of existing neighbourhoods into the urban fabric. The concept of ‘community well-being’ provides a useful framework to examine the relationship betw...

Organised by the Manchester Urban Institute of the University of Manchester, this four-day conference, held 31 October–3 November 2018, drew together over 100 delegates from the UK and Europe, China, Hong Kong, Australia, the USA and Chile. Noting how, with the publication of the National New Urbanisation Plan, China is reshaping its urban growth t...

Urbanization leads to the occupation of green areas, directly contributing to a high level of fragmentation of urban green spaces, which, in turn, results in numerous socioeconomic and environmental problems. Consequently, an understanding of the relationships between patterns of urban green spaces and urbanization processes is essential. Although...

Urban villages in China are very much a phenomenon of socio-spatial segregation rooted in deeply institutionalised urban–rural administrative dualism. This paper makes an original contribution to the debate by examining the role played by planning policies and measures in the redevelopment of urban villages in suburban Beijing under the state’s Nat...

Developed cities are troubled by various challenges, including urban dilapidation, environmental pollution, traffic congestion, lack of facility provision, and economic decline. Urban renewal, as an important agenda in most countries, holds the aim of addressing these urban problems. With the inherent complexity of urban renewal, renewal initiative...

In China, urban housing demolition increasingly challenges the maintenance of social sustainability. Social sustainability is a multi-dimensional concept that contains complex implications. Therefore, an assessment system that considers a range of key social indicators could substantially simplify this concept and improve decision-making pertaining...

Urban renewal provides valuable opportunities for sustainable development. Sustainability assessment is considered a useful tool in ensuring sustainable development in practice. Although a number of studies have been conducted to evaluate the potential of urban renewal, studies on sustainability assessment in urban renewal at a neighborhood scale a...

Purpose – Public housing in Hong Kong plays an essential role in accommodation supply to people of low income. Access to social resources and rent levels of nearby private residential housing are two critical issues impacting the well-being of residents living in public housing estates. However, previous research has rarely focused on the spatial d...

A considerable amount of research has been conducted on land use change, as it is extremely helpful when it comes to decision-making and policy formulation. Although land use change in urban renewal areas differs from that in new towns, very little research has focused on urban renewal and even less at the local or district level where most decisio...

A growing body of research has focused on a land use mechanism, which is the basis for making decisions and policies. Previous studies on an urban land use mechanism focused mainly on urbanization and urban sprawl, while urban renewal is often a neglected area. This research aims at analyzing land use mechanisms in urban renewal areas. The Kowloon...

Land resources are very limited in many high-density cities such as Hong Kong, and land supply is the major concern of local governments in these regions. Urban renewal provides an effective channel for adjusting land-use allocation and improving land-use efficiency (in a sense, increasing land supply). Under these circumstances, this paper develop...

Urban renewal and sustainable development are two popular issues in both policy agenda and academia. Although their importance has been increasingly recognized, an integrated review covering sustainability, planning, and urban renewal has yet to be produced. Based on 81 journal papers, this paper presents a critical review of recent studies on sust...