GREEN IS GOLD

Box 2-2 “All-In-One” Piloted in 28 Cities and Counties
After three decades of efforts, China has preliminarily established a spatial planning
system focusing on the overall planning of land use, urban and rural planning,
and regional planning. The system has played an important role in the country’s
industrialization and urbanization. There is still, however, a lack of spatial planning at
a more basic level. Plans formulated by different departments follow their respective
systems and tend to conflict with each other with little inter-linkages. It is also common
that local planning is poorly integrated with planning at a broader scale, is based on
inadequate scientific evidence and is subject to modifications at will. These problems
have exacerbated the disordered spatial development and intensified the shortage of
water and soil resources, ecological damage, and environmental pollution.
To address these issues, the government has proposed to unify national spatial
planning by integrating different spatial plans into a comprehensive spatial blueprint
for sustainable development. The proposal would unify the spatial planning at the
city and county levels and achieve the “All-In-One” integration of:1) economic and
social development plans; 2) urban and rural plans; 3) land utilization plans; and 4)
ecological and environmental protection plans. There is to be only one single plan and
single blueprint for each city and each county. In the planning, efforts will be made
to designate the space for production, residential areas, and ecological conservation,
defining boundaries for urban development, industrial zones, and rural residential
areas, as well as the boundaries for protecting cultivated land, woodland, prairie,
rivers, lakes, and wetlands.
In August 2014, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the
Ministry of Land Resources (MLR), the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), and
the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) launched “All-In-
One” pilots in 28 cities and counties. They are expected to improve the government’s
capability in spatial management and control, contributing to the intensive (as
opposed to extensive), efficient, and sustainable use of land space. They also serve
as an important foundation for reforming government planning by establishing a
consistent, complementary, and coordinated spatial planning system.
Source: NDRC et al., 2014.
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