Curbing Sprawl with Development-limiting Boundaries in Urban China: A Review of Literature

Facing the need to control urban sprawl, many Chinese cities are exploring the use of development-limiting boundaries, such as urban growth boundary (UGB) and urban development boundary (UDB), as required by the central government. Through a key word search of several databases including Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure, we identified and reviewed hundreds of articles published in academic or professional journals. Our review shows that policy processes discussed in the literature have emphasized the technical aspect with analytical sophistication. We identified three types of approach to UGB and UDB in the literature: the growth-driven, the constraint-oriented, and the hybrid. While urban theories and modeling techniques that originated from Western countries have greatly influenced the analytical process underlying some of these approaches, the UGB/UDB policy debate and explorations were also responsive to China's unique urban and policy conditions. Despite the rich empirical content in the literature, very little research has been grounded in a scientific understanding of China's urban development. Issues such as intergovernmental coordination, policy enforcement, and evaluation were also inadequately addressed in the existing literature. The literature's newness may have been a major factor for these limitations. Our critique of the current literature may inspire new areas of research to generate knowledge that can inform China's continuous policy efforts to combat urban sprawl.