Institutional Change and Policy Analysis of Small Towns (Contemporary Urban Planning Theory and Practice Series)

Author: Zou Bing (Editor)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-01
Features: This book is a treatise on the institutional and policy issues of China's small-town development, with the theories and methods of new institutional economics serving as the author's theoretical foundation and basic analytical approach for conducting research. The function of institutions lies in providing people with more opportunities for choice and facilitating the operation of market mechanisms. Institutional change is essentially a process of conflicts of interest between people and the process of resolving these conflicts. The process and methods of institutional change determine the efficiency of policy implementation and should serve as an important basis for policy selection and formulation. These three viewpoints constitute the fundamental starting point for the research in this treatise. On this basis, the author systematically analyzes and studies the institutional factors influencing the development of China's small towns during three different historical periods: the feudal traditional society, the planned economy system period, and the reform and opening-up period. These studies show that whether there is an institutional environment conducive to the effective functioning of market mechanisms is the key determinant of the development process of small towns. Additionally, the treatise points out that the choice of small-town development as the leading strategy for China's urbanization is determined by the principle of gradual urbanization, which is of the same nature as the gradual economic reform path. The smooth progress of small-town development owes much to the obvious advantages of this reform approach, while the various problems encountered during the development process are closely related to the inherent flaws of gradual reform. The incompleteness of the reform of the old system and the new institutional constraints generated during the reform process have become obstacles to the further development of small towns. However, the nature of China's institutional change determines that gradual reform will still be the path relied upon for institutional innovation and the starting point for policy formulation in the future development of small towns. In the treatise, the author proposes countermeasures and suggestions for institutional innovation to promote the healthy development of small towns through an analysis of the situation and policy objectives faced by small-town development at the turn of the century.