Low-carbon promises and realities: Lessons from three socio-technical experiments in Shanghai

Abstract China's ongoing transition to a modern urban-centered economy is accompanied by ambitions of sustained economic growth as well as promises of environmentally sustainable futures for its cities. In this paper we critically assess how these two ideas are combined and translated into realities on the ground by examining three low-carbon development projects in Shanghai: Anting New Town, Dongtan Eco-City, and Hongqiao CBD's low-carbon transportation hub. By mobilizing insights from the academic field of Sustainability Transitions – specifically on expectations, experimentation and innovation journeys – we show how the original plans derailed and why until now there has been limited success in living up to the promises of sustainability. To realize the promises more fully in future projects we identify three broad lessons for the actors involved: they should nurture a set of parallel pathways, foster a more experimentalist mindset, and learn to embrace uncertainty.

[1]  Liangjun Da,et al.  Ecological consequences of rapid urban expansion: Shanghai, China , 2006 .

[2]  Harro van Lente,et al.  Navigating foresight in a sea of expectations: lessons from the sociology of expectations , 2012, Technol. Anal. Strateg. Manag..

[3]  D. Loorbach.  Transition Management: New Mode of Governance for Sustainable Development , 2007 .

[4]  Mads Borup,et al.  The sociology of expectations in science and technology , 2006, Technol. Anal. Strateg. Manag..

[5]  Eric Sheppard,et al.  China's Eco-Cities as Variegated1 Urban Sustainability: Dongtan Eco-City and Chongming Eco-Island , 2013 .

[6]  Anna J. Wieczorek,et al.  Experimenting for sustainability transitions: A systematic literature review , 2016, Technological Forecasting and Social Change.

[7]  Raghu Garud,et al.  The innovation journey , 1999 .

[8]  中華人民共和国上海市統計局.  Shanghai statistical yearbook , 1988 .

[9]  You-tien Hsing,et al.  Book Review: The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China , 2010 .

[10]  Frank W. Geels,et al.  Strategic niche management and sustainable innovation journeys: theory, findings, research agenda, and policy , 2008, Technol. Anal. Strateg. Manag..

[11]  P. Elzer,et al.  project overview , 2002 .

[12]  Jieqiong Wang.  Eco-services for urban sustainability in the Yangtze River Delta of China: strategies for physical form and planning , 2012 .

[13]  H. D. Hartog.  Rural to Urban Transitions at Shanghai's Fringes: Explaining spatial transformation in the backyard of a Chinese mega-city with the help of the Layers-Approach , 2017 .

[14]  Haiyan Lu,et al.  Economic City Branding in China: the Multi-Level Governance of Municipal Self-Promotion in the Greater Pearl River Delta , 2017 .

[15]  J. Rotmans,et al.  Deepening, Broadening and Scaling up: a Framework for Steering Transition Experiments. , 2008 .

[16]  A. Karvonen,et al.  Urban Laboratories: Experiments in Reworking Cities , 2014 .

[17]  A. Hommels,et al.  Studying Obduracy in the City: Toward a Productive Fusion between Technology Studies and Urban Studies , 2005 .

[18]  Yanpeng Jiang.  New wave urban development in Shanghai: planning and building the Hongqiao transport hub and business zone , 2014 .

[19]  A. V. D. Ven,et al.  Explaining Development and Change in Organizations , 1995 .

[20]  R. Yin.  Case Study Research: Design and Methods , 1984 .

[21]  Fulong Wu.  China’s eco-cities , 2012 .

[22]  E. Sheppard,et al.  A Green Leap Forward? Eco-State Restructuring and the Tianjin–Binhai Eco-City Model , 2016 .

[23]  Anna J. Wieczorek,et al.  Sustainability experiments in Asia: innovations shaping alternative development pathways? , 2010 .

[24]  Mike Hodson,et al.  Cities mediating technological transitions: understanding visions, intermediation and consequences , 2009, Technol. Anal. Strateg. Manag..

[25]  P. Vergragt,et al.  Sustainable mobility: from technological innovation to societal learning , 2007 .

[26]  Frank W. Geels,et al.  The dynamics of sustainable innovation journeys , 2008, Technol. Anal. Strateg. Manag..

[27]  Kornelia Konrad,et al.  The social dynamics of expectations: The interaction of collective and actor-specific expectations on electronic commerce and interactive television , 2006, Technol. Anal. Strateg. Manag..

[28]  Federico Caprotti,et al.  ‘Eco’ For Whom? Envisioning Eco‐urbanism in the Sino‐Singapore Tianjin Eco‐city, China , 2015 .

[29]  J. Grin,et al.  Transitions to Sustainable Development: New Directions in the Study of Long Term Transformative Change , 2010 .

[30]  Andrew Stirling,et al.  Keep it complex , 2010, Nature.

[31]  B. Truffer,et al.  Sustainability transitions: An emerging field of research and its prospects , 2012 .

[32]  R. Garud,et al.  Contextualizing entrepreneurial innovation: a narrative perspective , 2014, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[33]  H. Blumer.  What Is Wrong with Social Theory , 1954 .

[34]  Xiaoling Zhang,et al.  Planning for sustainable cities? A comparative content analysis of the master plans of eco, low-carbon and conventional new towns in China , 2017 .

[35]  R.J.F. Hoogma,et al.  Experimenting with sustainable transport innovations : a workbook for strategic niche management , 1999 .

[36]  Frank Nevens,et al.  Urban Transition Labs: co-creating transformative action for sustainable cities , 2013 .

[37]  Dong Wang,et al.  Exploring the Relevance of the Eco-City Concept in China: The Case of Shenzhen Sino-Dutch Low Carbon City , 2013 .