Fundamentos teóricos y/o mapa conceptual (de la teoría que sustenta la hipótesis)

In terms of the timing and duration of collaboration and communication, there are numerous questions that need to be answered relating to when and for how long collaboration and communication could, and should, be carried out. As previously indicated, improper time and duration significantly hampered collaboration and communication within the development of Chinese eco-cities.

1) The scope of using political discretion: There has been criticism of the abuse of discretion during the engagement of political state bodies in China (Li and Liu, 2004; Chen, 2010; Li and Hu, 2015). The existing political system and the mechanisms of decision-making ensure that the elites dominate the process of decision-making, as well as the processes of collaboration and communication. Though this may have advantages when

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it comes to launching and implementing the planning of an eco-city, there is a concern that political discretion has relatively more influential and impact on plan-making than peer review. Planning professionals believe that the approach of making and planning an eco-city programme should not be dominated by political discretion because it can lead to less successful development programmes being pursued. It can also lead to them being developed purely on the basis of political will.

Recommendation: Build a legal framework to re-define the institutional structure of decision-making. The new framework should include restrictions on when political discretion can be used to avoid the abuse of discretionary power. According to the employment of discretion in current urban developments in China, mistakes and less rational decisions are acceptable (Lei, 2001). The legislation should summarise the previous employment of discretion, and attempt to generalise the experiences in the legal system.

For instance, financial reward is more suitable for the development of green buildings than for plot ratios. It is therefore essential to scrutinise discretionary power if one is to deal efficiently with those issues that emerge during the delivery an eco-city programme.

2) Short-term collaborative relationships: In the economic and cultural dimensions, the current communicative relationship between local government and planning professionals causes a time lag between events occurring and solutions being proffered. It also results in a gap between the assessment system and the actual development of the eco-city. The planners suggested that a continuous, or long-term, collaborative relationship could maintain an in-depth rationality and logic to planning documents, and also reduce the time and cost involved in their seeking to understand previous planning documents. Additionally, it is suggested that the development of GI is hampered by the short-term nature of collaborations between planning professionals, government, and developers during the period of designing GI programmes.

Recommendation: Establishing a continuous relationship between local government and planning professionals could benefit the process of decision-making and promote the effectiveness of collaboration and communication. Getting insights from planning professionals in Shanghai and Tianjin, it is expected that a mechanism for planning consultancy will be established which could deal with the time lag between an event occurring and the solution to an issue in the delivery of ecological programmes being found.

It could also be carried out flexibly based on the changing circumstances that develop within an eco-city development. Despite the flexibility of time spent on collaboration and

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communication, the study proposes that the delivery of a long-term collaborative and communicative relationship between multi-stakeholders is required at each stage of planning. According to the findings of Ge (2012), long-term collaboration between stakeholders could facilitate the practice of planning in the delivery of residential programmes. A long-term relationship could reduce the time taken in the preparation of plan-making by avoiding the potential barriers and conflicts that occur at the beginning stage of collaboration and communication, such as bifurcations on decision-making or the difficulties associated with understanding ecological programmes. Indeed, a long-term relationship could be established if consensus can be built regarding the delivery of eco-cities.

A long-term relationship could also support a continuous investigation and study into emerging ecological programmes. Chinese planning professionals, especially those who receive a planning education focused on space-making and urban design, are faced with needing to learn from emerging issues in the economic, social, environmental dimensions of the delivery of an eco-city. It should not be a precondition for decision-making that planning professionals can make proper suggestions to deal with the issues (Chen, 2000). Therefore, decision-making should develop, as well as learn from, eco-city projects by continuously using and developing skills and knowledge together. For instance, the GBRI contributed revisions of planning policy to address the less efficient evaluation of the green building because the planning professionals in GBRI had a long-term opportunity to study the reason for the policy failure that had occurred in the assessment of green buildings in Tianjin Eco-city. Consequently, it is argued that a long-term and continuous relationship between local government and planning professionals should be established to reinforce existing collaboration and communication.

3) Limited opportunity for the public to participate in decision-making at an initial stage:

In the field of public participation there is limited opportunity for the public and local community to engage in the decision-making of the delivery of an eco-city, especially at the beginning stage of decision-making. This has been criticised because it means that the process is too top-down, with limited consideration of public welfare and social harmony (Liu, 2013). The importance of extensive public participation has been highlighted in both theoretical discussions and actual developments (Urban Ecology, 2016; Interview II, 2015).

The participation of the public during the process of decision-making could gain support in the fields of land use and attracting investment. It could also help in the delivery of GI by

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understanding public requirements and using public knowledge (Du and Yu, 2010). Although the methods of public participation in urban development are stated legally in URPL (2007), practitioners showed limited confidence in adopting public notification and public hearings in practice (Interview I, 2015).

Recommendation: In terms of engaging the public, a complete process of public participation including the engagement of the public at each stage of decision-making from plan-making to feedback is needed (Sun and Zhu, 2010). The legal system should indicate the mechanism for engaging the public and social sectors in the process of decision-making to ensure the adoption of public interests. Indeed, a variety of data could be generated through communication with the public and local communities and this could promote the rationality and effectiveness of the policy and planning documents in the urban development (Du and Yu, 2010). In order to avoid tokenism, it should indicate the opportunities and schedules for engaging the public and local community in the process of decision-making. This is important as Ma and Zhou (2006) raised the question of when the public and local community should, or should not, be engaged. According to the current congressional democratic system, the People’s Congress plays an essential role in public participation. The ideas of the representatives of the public and local community should be evaluated and scrutinised carefully. During the adjournment, the decision-makers should engage the given local community at the inception of plan-making or when the public are recognised as stakeholders rather than only when planning documents are ready for peer review and publicity. Furthermore, the process of public participation should indicate the time cost of engaging the public and the local community. This approach could be extended to include the process of plan-making (Chen, 2000; Interview I, 2015).