Rémi Curien: Essential network services and the urban fabric in China: the quest for environmental sustainability amidst rapid development – Studies in Shanghai, Suzhou and Tianjin.

Making the country’s development more environmentally sustainable without significantly altering the pace of economic and urban growth: this is the challenge the Chinese authorities have been tackling since 2006 in order to address the growing pressure on natural environments and the severe environmental degradation caused by rapid development. China is probably the only country in the world where energy and environmental efficiency in the provision of essential urban services (water, sanitation, electricity, gas, heating, solid waste management) is being pursued so vigorously through circular economy policies and the operation of eco-industrial parks and eco-cities, against a backdrop of sustained and prolonged economic and urban development.

Based on a study conducted in Shanghai, Suzhou and Tianjin—three cities at the forefront of China’s transformation—combined with an analysis of the national framework and the country’s overall situation, this thesis aims to analyse the substance and forms of the environmentalisation of essential urban services being implemented in China. Our research shows that China’s ambitious policies for the environmentalisation of essential services are resulting in cities in a partial improvement in the environmental quality of their provision, whilst the prospect of resource efficiency and the circular economy remains a distant one. The prevalence of developmentalist urban planning structurally hinders the emergence of technical systems for resource reuse that offer alternatives to conventional networks. The path towards the environmentalisation of essential services taken in Chinese cities remains too technology-centred and too detached from urban planning for environmentalisation—and in particular the pursuit of resource efficiency—to be more substantial.

From an operational perspective, these lessons suggest that, in China and beyond, greater consideration should be given to issues relating to the provision of essential services in urban planning and development.