It is said that to develop the Chinese economy we need “the structural reforms on the supply side”. Similarly, to improve the quality of cities in China we need the important “reforms on the supply side” as well. Now the development of cities in China is relatively slow, unable to meet the increasing demand of the citizens; but the basic trend in urban development is from extensive mode of development to intensive mode of development. In the 1960s and the 1970s, there were serious problems such as environmental contamination, traffic jams, inadequacy of public services, etc. in the cities of the West, and this situation was finally improved through a finer way of urban management.

The delicacy management of cities is a term symbolizing China’s transition from an old form of urbanization to a new style of urbanization. Such transition in this phase is not only an issue of reforms, but also a strategic issue for urban development. It is a problem that all mayors should pay full attention to. It should not be a responsibility solely assumed by a single department. When faced with the increasing number of social events and frequent occurrences of natural disasters in the urban development, if we do not reform our strategic consciousness and make systemic arrangement comprehensively, or if we still simply stick to the extensive mode of urban development, which only emphasizes the speed, and passively take stopgap measures, we will not possibly improve the quality of urban development effectively, and we will not be able to get to the root of or reduce the number of events that affect the urban development.

Concerning delicacy management in terms of the urban management process, people just simply define it as the operation management carried out by municipal departments, such as management of street vendors in the cities, management of garbage, and management of environment etc. In fact, good urban management is composed of three aspects, namely, management of urban planning, management of urban construction, and management of urban operation; moreover, delicacy management should be involved throughout the whole process of urban development.

On the one hand, there should be upgrading in our management of city planning. Most cities in China should complete the urban planning transition from The 2000-2020 City Planning (the so-called “Phase I” or “Edition I”) which is still in progress in most cities to The 2020-2040 City Planning (the so-called “Phase II” or “Edition II”) which is now investigated and carried out first in some big cities like Shanghai and Beijing. There is an essential difference between these two phases of management: the main goal for the 2000-2020 urban development is to increase the number of cities while the main goal for the 2020-2040 urban development is to maintain the number and scale of cities and to optimize the quality of cities, but not to boost the geographical expansion of cities.

On the other hand, operation management in the urban development becomes more and more technical. Over the past few decades, we have attached great importance to the urban planning and construction that is high-end, magnificent and classy, and paid inadequate attention to the research and development of operation management. The daily management activities are mostly concerned with general issues. It is not professionalized enough. To improve the delicacy management in urban development, we need to improve our professional skills in operation management and understand it in a more scientific manner.

Concerning the focus of urban management, the original focus of the urban development in the past is mainly economy. People tended to pay attention to the problems as to how to boost the GDP growth in the cities and how to make full use of the land in the cities to build development zones. All of these are in accordance with the development phase of China in the past. Now we can see a lot of significant progress in the economy and people’s income has increased. Under this circumstance, people are now paying more attention to the social and ecological problems in the cities.

At present, many problems in the cities are actually the conflicts between economic space and social space or the conflicts between economic space and environmental space. Many of the recent “Not-In-My-Back-Yard” events are typical examples of these conflicts. Therefore, the city management in China should be changed, from the traditional style of economic management to the comprehensive quality management that combines not only economic management, but also social and environmental management.

Some cities that pioneered the urban planning transition in China have tried to reduce their over expanded economic space in urban development, turning more and more of it into public space and ecological space. From this adjustment, we can see that the original plans of city management were immature. We should learn from these lessons and it is time we took more details of urban development into our consideration.

Concerning the main body that is in charge of city management, the government’s simple top-down way of management, which was feasible in the past, does not work now under the present situation when interests of different groups in the cities are all taken into account. For instance, to build an incineration plant, what the government and constructors take into consideration is cost-benefit, so they would choose the most economical way of construction. However, citizens who live near the location of the incineration plant are more concerned with the social and environmental benefits. Hence different types of interests begin to conflict with each other. Under this circumstance, a decision promptly made by the government cannot really solve the problem. It requires the government to do thorough research and make full consideration in the process.

On the one hand, there may be many conflicts between different departments in the municipal government. We can always find that policies made by different departments are not consistent with each other. Therefore, to maintain good city management, the government should integrate the policies made by different departments and make them consistent with each other; the government cannot allow the departments to issue inconsistent policies and work separately on their own.

On the other hand, the goal of city management is to provide services to citizens, so when making decisions on public policies, the government should take into account the citizens, especially citizens with conflicting interests. For instance, at the very beginning of the construction of a new area or a new town, the population is sparse; but soon after the construction, an influx of population may be seen there. If the population is not large enough, the government that manages the city can make decisions on its own; but once the new city is densely populated, the city governors need to talk to the local people and learn about their needs. However, such talks are still inadequate in some areas in China. To strike a balance there, the local government and the local people should still cooperate more with each other.

To sum up, the strategic delicacy management requires strong cooperation between government and government, between government and enterprises, between government and social organizations, and between government and citizens in the process of city management.

Note: The author is a professor and the director of the Think Tank of Sustainable Development and New-Style Urbanization at Tongji University. This article first appeared in Global Times on Aug. 9th, 2016.