Inter-jurisdictional cooperation in planning and development of greenways in Pearl River Delta

Abstract

The fragmented politics set an unavoidable barrier for the governance of a region, where jurisdictions may share collective interests to cope with regional issues like the delivery of infrastructure, environmental degradation, etc. Inter-jurisdictional cooperation is the key concept to tackle the fragmented complex through employing corresponding types of regional governance.

Experiencing over thirty years’ fast economic growth, the Pearl River Delta is transforming from a single-centred region to a polycentric one. Each jurisdiction has demonstrated a strong economic competitiveness and shaped the PRD to become the most populated mega-city region. However, political decentralization roused the inter-urban competitions, and regional problems like environmental degradation occurred even though the provincial government has promoted a series of regional plans to coordinate collective issues in last decades.

The PRD Greenway Scheme can be understood as a tool for implementing the concept of “Regional Green Land”, which dedicated to define the boundaries of green land to preserve the integrated ecological value.

To materialise it, the provincial government adopted a multi-tier planning approach and required the jurisdictions to rise funding sources locally. To facilitate its implementation, corresponding institutional arrangements including both provincial level inter-departmental collaboration and inter-scalar coordination have been conducted. And both formal and informal tactics have been adopted.

Various achievements have been observed and benefits have been generated to the whole society. Meanwhile, variations emerged between jurisdictions because of different local leaders’ ambitions, urban development contexts and the conditions of local fiscal budgets.

To conclude, I have found that the PRD case has “re-invented” regional governance successfully through establishing an ad-hoc cooperation mechanism. And it did avoid the common challenges that western theories have defined because of the governments’ potent intervention. However, public perception can be a controversial issue for a top-down administrative structure.

To improve the mechanism, the criteria of evaluating municipalities’ performances can be diversified to include the index of quality, innovative design like flagship sections can be beneficial to public perception, and participation of various actors can be emphasized to cultivate the lifestyle of using greenways.