As an important component of China’s efforts at reform and its opening-up policy, China’s development zones have been experiencing rapid development for nearly 40 years and have played a huge role in promoting the country’s economic growth, industrial development, technological innovation and urban construction. This article focuses on the changing priorities and objectives of high-tech development zones and how they have shaped the spatiality of development zones. We also analyse the role of urban planning in delivering these spatial changes thereby expanding on the concept of planning centrality which was introduced by Wu in his 2018 article ‘Planning centrality, market instruments: Governing Chinese urban transformation under state entrepreneurialism’. By drawing on the case of the Optics Valley of China (also known as Wuhan East Lake High-Tech Development Zone), we illustrate how development zones have evolved spatially over 30 years due to the changing needs of the national government as well as the Wuhan municipality. We categorise these changes to the project’s spatial form into three stages: from block to park, from park to urban area, and finally, from urban area to new city. These three stages signify the different priorities of the Chinese state starting from industrial development, to land-based accumulation and now focusing on delivering an ecological civilisation and attracting and retaining a highly skilled workforce. For each corresponding stage, urban planning has played a crucial role whereby the change from a block to park was driven by regulatory and strategic planning whilst for instance the change from an urban area to a new city required planning to focus more on the delivery of high-quality public spaces and amenities through detailed urban design guidance and schemes.