Comparative Study of Process Managements between Chinese and German
Low-carbon Urban Development:
The case studies of Shanghai Lingang New Town and Freiburg
Yue SHUAI
College of architecture and urban planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
e-mail:[email protected]
Keywords: low-carbon urban development, process management, Lingang New Town,
Freiburg
The connotation of low-carbon urban development, which adapts to the way that
market economy works, is quite different from the concept of low-carbon urban
construction. It also covers urban management, process plan, and the study of
interrelation among government-developer-urban consumer. For the time
being, although China and Germany are at their different stage of low-carbon city
development, they all face the increasing problems coming from complex social
background and the intervention of multiple roles during the development process.
Therefore, by ensuring the ordering and integrity in every phase of the development
can we turn this pure low-carbon theory into specific practices and implement them to
the urban spatial organization, which means it is more and more important to deal
with the uncertainties and confusions using tools of process management.
The concept of ‘Process Management’ was first introduced in the field of business
administration, which is different from ‘management’, the former one emphasizes
more on the sequence of time and how to put theory into practice step by step through
overall supervision. The whole process consists five specific management phases, see
in Firgure1. During the study the author apply this concept to the field of low-carbon
urban development as our main research methodology and find out that there existing
one-to-one relationship, see in Figure2.
Figure1 (left). Process management in business administration
Source: http://baike.so.com/doc/5381726.html
Figure2(right). Process management in urban planning
Source: drawn by author
Our study mainly focus on two typical low-carbon cities in China (Shanghai Lingang
new town) and Germany (Freiburg) for the discovery of differences in their process
management of low-carbon urban development and effective ways to improve the
management methods. China is at its primary stage of low-carbon city development
and nearly all the work are done with the design of macroscopical framework while
the low-carbon processes within urban expansion in the long run is ignored. This
phenomenon is widespread even including one of our cases: Shanghai Lingang new
town, which is totally new low-carbon city built from zero and has already become
one of the best practice and demonstration areas of low-carbon strategy. In contrasting,
Germany has a relatively higher level of development and the city Freiburg, which
becomes well-known by Chinese people after its participation in Expo 2010 Shanghai,
has showed its leading role in practicing low-carbon ideas. The low-carbon projects
and practices in the two cities fully take on their special characteristics which are
determined by their geographical features, development degrees, central policies and
urban contexts.
After the one-to-one comparative study between Chinese and German low-carbon
urban development by using the methodology of process managements, the author
find these following differences in their motivations and targets, contents, ways of
implementation, and all these factors will lead to different results:
(1) Since low-carbon urban planning and construction started in western developed
countries at a very early time, Germany has a relatively higher positivity and
greater target. But low-carbon development started late China, whose motivation
is more likely to improve the environment condition while improving economic
growth, the result is less significant and the positivity is lower. So the starting
point of the two cities are different.
(2) The low-carbon urban development in Germany is more comprehensive which
includes every possible aspect in urban life. Contrast to German deeper research,
the explorations in Chinese low-carbon urban development mainly focus on
several low-carbon exemplary areas, low-carbon industries and equipment
manufacturing. So the low-carbon developing content of the two cities are
different.
(3) Referring to controlling measures, Germany tends to take use of the market force,
organize every participant, and make full use of ‘bottom-up’’ public oversight
system to get evaluation and feedback. However, most low-carbon developments
in China are depending on the promotion of government and ‘up-bottom’
regulatory system and it will easily fall into the plight of lacking resilience for
future problems and possibilities. So the ways of implementation are different.
Low-carbon process development is neither simple market behavior nor total
government behavior, it is a process influenced by three main body,
‘government-market-public’. For the reason that we are in a complex urban condition
full of climate changes, disaster risks, high carbon emissions and serious
environmental pollutions, every development activity should be conducted into
baby step with smart process management. As a consequence, there is an urgent need
to transform the conventional idea of 100 percent certainty and predictability into a
process management model combining every phase with positive and timely feedback,
collaborating with different sections of the city, and finally finding a new adaptive
method to enhance the city capacity against uncertainties.
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