Governing Resilience Planning: Organizational Structures, Institutional Rules, and Fiscal Incentives in Guangzhou

Abstract

Researchers and policymakers have long called for a collaborative governance process for climate adaptation and flood resilience. However, this is usually challenging when urban planning is supposed to be integrated with water management. Using the Chinese city of Guangzhou as a case study, this study explores the long-term disadvantaged conditions of urban planning in flood governance and how this situation is shaped. The findings show that, in comparison to the increasingly dominant position of water management in flood affairs, the urban planning system has had weak powers, limited legitimate opportunities, and insufficient fiscal incentives from the 2000s to the late 2010s. Those conditions have been shaped by organizational structures, institutional rules, and financial allocation in urban governance, whose changes did not bring benefits to urban planning. The emergence of the Sponge City Program in China in 2017 and its implementation at the municipal level is deemed to be a new start for urban planning, considering the encouragement of nature-based solutions and regulatory tools in land use for flood resilience. Even so, the future of this program is still full of challenges and more efforts are needed.

A bibliometric analysis of research on organizational resilience

“…The key terms in Cluster #4, which mainly deals with emergency management, are emergency management [ 40 ], interdependence [ [41] , [42] , [43] ], multi-case study [ 44 ], urban resilience [ 40 , 45 ], and grounded theory [ 46 ].…”

Governing Urban Climate Resilience (UCR): Systems, Agents, and Institutions in Shanghai, China

“…The HURCMC has power over the spatial design of drainpipes, green spaces, and other elements related to flood affairs in dry territories, playing a supportive and coordinating role. While some argue that path dependency, rooted in outdated planning and policy, may pose intersectoral barriers for agents to effectively collaborate [80,81], the WBA prioritized flood resilience with the support of a dedicated financial grant from the central government, which has resulted in a significant increase in the city's level of flood resilience.…”