从生态城市to Sustainable City-Regions

China’s Uncertain Quest for an Ecological Civilization

Ernest J. Yanarella, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky and Richard S. Levine, Professor Emeritus, School of Architecture, University of Kentucky and Principal Architect, CSC Design Studio, US

A political scientist and an urban architect explore China’s odyssey to become an ecological civilization and transform its massive, unsustainable, urbanization process into one that creates hundreds of eco-cities. The resulting From Eco-Cities to Sustainable City-Regions is the first book-length study combining analysis of politics and power, urban design and planning issues derived from the co-authors’ interdisciplinary research, and on-site fieldwork from their political science and architectural area specialties.

‘Overall, this book provides good insights into China’s sustainability effort, the development logic, and various controversies in China’s eco-park development. The various cases provide a vivid view of how Chinese cities search for their path in ecological modernization and the bumpy roads they experienced when attempting to transplant the sustainability concept into the local soil. It can be used as a textbook for under-graduates or graduates to understand sustainability debates and its operationalization process in different political-economic-societal contexts. It can also provide researchers on sustainability and eco-park development with rich information and provocative reflections on the global sustainability debate.’
– Yawei Chen, Eurasian Geography and Economics

‘This remarkable book brings a bold new vision to urban architectural design as an opportunity for informed collective activism over time.’
– Robert J Koester, The Plan Journal

‘This remarkable book brings a bold new vision to achieve highly-integrative systemic performance at the scale of the City-as-a-Hill and its surrounding rural partner land. No less, it provides the means for the ambitious sustainability interests of the Chinese party-state to achieve global recognition for becoming a social and environmentally integrated ecological civilization.’
– Robert J. Koester, Ball State University, US

‘From Eco-Cities to Sustainable City-Regions by Ernest J. Yanarella and Richard S. Levine deserves to be widely read. General readers, China specialists, environmental scientists, and policy makers alike will gain insight into current sustainability concepts and practices around the world, be drawn into a case study approach to China’s environmental challenges, and benefit from the well balanced analysis of China’s efforts, complications, achievements, and failures to address those challenges through the creation of sustainable city-regions.’
– Terry Bodenhorn, (Retired) Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Director of the Library, and Professor of Modern Chinese History, Shantou University, China, 2010–2019

‘Yanarella and Levine bring a needed focus on the term “eco-cities,” taking it further to “sustainable city-regions.” They draw on their detailed knowledge of China’s exploration of eco-cities as part of an ecological civilization. This book is an important assessment of a key aspect of transitioning to a sustainable future.’
– Haydn Washington, author of What Can I Do to Help Heal the Environmental Crisis?