The 2025 International Conference on China Urban Development
Governing Urban Development in a Changing World
7-8 July 2025, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London. 30 Guilford Street, WC1N 1EH. London, UK
Conference report here.
Following a series of International Conferences on China’s Urban Development in Hong Kong, Cardiff, Shanghai, London, Glasgow, and Manchester, the conference will return to London in 2025 to place Chinese cities in a changing world and engage with a wider urban studies community. The conference is organised with the project ‘Rethinking Urban Governance in China’, funded by the European Research Council (ERC). It provides a forum for dialogue on China’s broad political, economic, social, and environmental challenges and governance. It also welcomes papers focusing on urban development and governance in other regions.
The themes include but are not limited to:
- Urbanisation, urban (re)development and transformation, and new directions of urban development
- Urban governance, politics, state interventions, and statecraft
- Environmental and climate governance, sustainability transition, resiliency, and low-carbon urbanism
- Social changes in the post-pandemic era, urban social movements, and state-society relationship
- Economic growth, governing innovation, and state-firm relations in geopolitical tensions
- Financing urban development, land finance, financialisation, and geoeconomics
- Urban regeneration, gentrification, communities, and social and spatial reconfiguration
- Spatial planning across neighborhoods, cities, and regional scales
- Beyond the city: rurality, city-regions, mega urban regions
- Comparative urban studies and interdisciplinary innovative methods
- Smart or artificial intelligent approaches to urban governance and studies
- Theorising urban development, state interventions, spatial governance with or beyond China
Conference Programme here, updated on 4 July 2025
Abstract collection here, updated on 3 July 2025
Keynote speakers and panellists
Keynote I: Professor Anthony G.O. Yeh, The University of Hong Kong
Keynote II: Professor Jamie Peck, The University of British Columbia
Panellists for Transactions of Planning and Urban Research (TPUR) Plenary Forum I: Changing Urban Studies and the Future of Urban China Research
Professor Michael Batty, University College London
Professor Cecilia Wong, The University of Manchester
Professor David Wilson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Professor Max Woodworth, The Ohio State University
Panellists for TPUR Plenary Forum II: Critical Debates in China’s Urban Governance
Professor Zhigang Li, Wuhan University
Professor Shenjing He, The University of Hong Kong
Professor Hyun Bang Shin, London School of Economics and Political Science
Professor Jiang Xu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Registration information
Please register here.
Registration fees (standard and student rates): £380
Registration deadline: 15 June 2025
Other information
You are welcome to attend the pre-conference welcome activity. It is a river cruise consisting of a round trip starting/ending at Westminster Pier in the afternoon on 6th July. You can register here.
You can find travel and accommodation advice here.
The conference organiser is China Planning Research Group (CPRG) at Bartlett School of Planning, University College London (UCL).