Annual Conference of RSA China Division 2024. Chengdu, China. 15/11/2024-17/11/2024.

Prof. Wu gave a keynote speech on green urban governance. The speech was in Chinese, and the title in Chinese was 《绿色城市治理：以成都公园城市建设为例》, which means ‘Green urban governance: Park City of Chengdu’. During the speech, he introduced the recent emphasis on the environmental dimension of urban governance in China, including the ‘ecological civilisation’ mostly mentioned in the literature and policy practice. He argued that such an emphasis reflects state entrepreneurialism, a concept coined by him to describe China’s urban governance. This concept highlights the central role of the state in urban governance, in which the state deploys market instruments for its objectives. He illustrated how the Chinese state maintains its centrality, combining environmentalism and developmentalism while deploying flexible market development tools. He used Chengdu park-city model as the example to support the view. The model reflects the central government’s vision for ecological civilisation and the local government’s economic development strategy. The development tools include land consolidation, financial mobilisation and an economic strategy that attempts to introduce ‘urban scenes’ into ecological spaces. This ecologically oriented development approach is more state-centred, contrasting with the neoliberal green growth machine.