When: Monday March 20th, 2023 | Where: Harvard University Campus, Cambridge, MA

China’s rapid urbanization has come with a stunning assortment of plans: urban plans, land plans, economic plans, demographic planning, and so forth.  At the same time, China’s urbanization has also been characterized by a large amount of activity outside of these plans: informal construction, widespread migration, informal land uses, among others.  This conference aims to put research across various aspects of Chinese urbanization into dialogue around a unifying question: To what extent has planning guided China’s urbanization? Have plans driven urban development or have the cities we observe today developed in contravention to—or in compromise with—planning?

This conference brings together scholars conducting cutting-edge research on urban China to learn from and improve one another’s work. The one-day event will feature several themed panels, each including original research presentations, comments from a discussant, and time for engagement with other conference participants. Thanks to the generous support of the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC and the Harvard Fairbank Center, we are able to offer several modest travel awards (300 USD), competitively selected by the conference organizing committee.

Please use this form to submit your extended abstract (500 words) by December 15th.