¹School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WA, UK.

Correspondence: Zhaohua Deng, E-mail: dengz2@cardiff.ac.uk

Abstract

This paper explores current trends in design review in China, in order to understand its objectives and achievements, and to see how the political and economic conditions of a city affect both the control process and the design outcome. It locates the current practice of design control within an international context by briefly reviewing the Western design-control literature, reviewing Chinese urban form in the pre-reform period, and then focusing on one detailed case study of development control, that of a recent commercial office development in the city of Shenzhen, which is something of a leader in the field of design review in China. This paper concludes that the current good practice in design control in China requires political support for intervention, additional design skills within the planning function and a moving away from elevational control to address the quality of public space, giving statutory status to the Statutory Map, and creating a mechanism to regularize planning negotiation. Meanwhile, sustainable design and construction issues remain outside of the development control agenda, while public participation levels are still low and the planning appeal mechanism needs to be improved. The introduction of a sophisticated design-control practice is dependent on another level of institutional reform.