At present, China's urban construction is proceeding at an unprecedented speed, which not only injects new vitality into China's economic construction, but also produces many new problems, resulting in the loss of economic and social benefits and affecting the sustainable development of cities. These problems in urban planning and construction are mainly manifested in the following aspects.

The "enclosure movement" of smoke everywhere leads to serious waste of land resources in urban suburbs, and the problem of farmers' non-agriculture is more prominent. Due to the implementation of market economy, housing system reform, allowing land auction, the state encourages urbanization, real estate and economic development zones suddenly explode, and the "enclosure movement" of cities is getting higher and higher. According to statistics, from June to August, 2002, the national land acquisition area was136.8 million square meters, a year-on-year increase of 42%. The "enclosure movement", which caused a large loss of state-owned land assets, is full of shady scenes: blind enclosure leads to malicious speculation, land and house prices rise, showing signs of "virtual fever", and real estate is in danger of bubble; There is no project feasibility study and planning before and after enclosure, which leads to the strange phenomenon that the development zone is opened but not developed, resulting in idle land resources; Blind enclosure destroyed a large number of cultivated land, resulting in insufficient reserve land resources. In addition, enclosure has also caused the problem of farmers' non-agriculture. Generally speaking, after enclosure, the only way out for landless peasants is to turn to secondary and tertiary industries, so as to realize farmers' non-agriculture and steadily promote urbanization. However, according to state regulations, rural land cannot directly enter the primary market, and can only be expropriated by the state at a lower price. Compared with the price of land requisitioned by the state, there are several times or more price differences. In addition, the compensation paid by land-expropriated farmers is too low, and the development cost of secondary and tertiary industries that farmers need to pay to find a way out is often several times that of land-expropriated compensation. Therefore, it is difficult for farmers to make productive investment in the secondary and tertiary industries, let alone let this fund play its social security and medical security functions for a long time. All these will have a considerable negative impact on urbanization and leave hidden dangers for social stability.

Ancient buildings and historical sites that embody historical and cultural traditions have been destroyed or even completely disappeared. In the architectural history, we are often proud of the colorful architectural styles of different regions, different nationalities and different periods in China, but in the blind pursuit of "a small change every year, a big change every three years", we have been ruthlessly demolished. There are high-density, high-volume commercial houses and roads on their old site. The original buildings, roads, historical sites and cultural context of the city built for hundreds of years and thousands of years have disappeared forever in the roar of machines. For example, in order to build a trunk road through the urban area, the ancient city of Suzhou demolished several kilometers of ancient buildings such as streets and stone bridges during the Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing and Republic of China. No matter how hard the citizens try, they still can't keep these historical relics that can never be copied. In view of this, UNESCO made it clear that it would not accept the application for "World Cultural Heritage" project in the name of "Suzhou Ancient City". At the same time, without reasonable planning, many representative urban buildings are surrounded by groups of matchbox buildings and unfinished buildings without cultural foundation, losing the skyline and the proper landscape display, just like yesterday's yellow flowers.

Regardless of the trend of regional integration, cities engage in "vassal planning" In order to compete with each other, many cities ignore the objective existence of the metropolitan area and the tide of economic globalization and regional integration, and unilaterally plan a city from the perspective of their own city competition, resulting in the similarity of the industrial structure of the city. For example, many cities are located in information industry and high-tech industry, which leads to unreasonable regional infrastructure planning and urban development layout. The lack of regional support in a single city is just like the lack of water and the lack of stamina of fish, which is not conducive to the development of the whole region. All these have seriously hindered the overall strength of China city and reduced its international competitiveness.

Great efforts have been made in image project and performance project, and urban planning is similar. Many city governments blindly build large squares, lawns and super high-rise buildings in order to show their political achievements and charm. Some cities have built more than a dozen squares at once. You know, China is a country that is seriously short of water. Watering the lawns of these big squares not only costs money that should have been used in other areas, but also increases the pressure on water supply in the city. Some cities spend huge sums of money to buy ancient trees from deep forests and transplant tens of thousands of rare and towering trees into cities. The greening rate of the city has indeed improved a lot for a while, and the city has become a lush "garden city". But soon, these trees died because of "acclimatization", which caused great waste. Some cities have established super-high-rise "landmark buildings", which stand out in the corner of the city and are extremely out of harmony with the urban landscape. Many cities have similar plans: central business district, square, pedestrian street, ring road, university town, development zone and so on. Medium-sized cities imitate (special) big cities, small cities copy medium-sized cities, and towns copy small cities. Cities are like products produced by assembly lines. Thousands of cities, almost no urban personality.

There are other questions. If some cities unilaterally pursue economic interests and do not pay attention to protecting the ecological environment and controlling environmental pollution, the SARS incident will challenge China's urban planning and environmental construction; The large-scale construction and super-scale development of some cities in scenic spots have seriously damaged the natural ecology and landscape resources of scenic spots and affected the sustainable development of cities. Wait, wait.

Second, the defects of China urban planning system

The fundamental reason for the above situation lies in the existing urban planning system in China to a great extent. The urban planning system includes three aspects: the preparation and approval of urban planning; Implementation and management of urban planning; Supervision and inspection of urban planning. The author believes that at present, China's urban planning system mainly has the following four defects.

First of all, administrative judgment and the will of the chief executive greatly affect urban planning. "The new official takes office with three fires". Party and government leaders often value their achievements during their term of office, and superior leaders assess how many projects they have built. In addition, they have a vague understanding of the importance of urban planning and think that planning is dispensable. As long as the economy develops, everything else is secondary. Due to the pursuit of political achievements, the city government and leaders are consciously or unconsciously influenced by developers or led by the nose, which inevitably leads to many short-term behaviors of sacrificing public interests for immediate economic development: asking the planning department to prepare plans according to the will of the leaders, or using power to change the approved urban plans at will. A jingle sums up this point: "It's better to plan than to lead a sentence." Under the control of the consciousness of political achievements, the municipal government grants land at will as long as the project, regardless of planning. In this case, the planning department is in a dilemma between adhering to the principle and not adhering to the principle: adhering to the principle will offend the leaders; Failure to adhere to principles is dereliction of duty. Under the current system, planning must obey the project and leadership. At present, the will of the Chief Executive strongly influences urban planning and interferes with its rationality. There is a contradiction between the long-term planning interests and the achievements of the government during its term of office, and there is a contradiction between the integrity of planning interests and the locality of developers' interests.

In short, at this stage, administrative leaders have the thinking and behavior mode of "making achievements-developing economy-attracting investment-breaking through planning", which makes urban planning departments and designers face a chess game in which "chess pieces" can move on their own. Their beautiful blueprint, influenced by the will of the administrative department in planning and implementation, has been unrecognizable and fragmented after continuous revision.

Second, there is a lack of planning management and supervision. At present, the above-mentioned "alienation phenomenon" appears in urban planning, which makes the planning very much like plasticine. It can shrink, expand and revolve around energy, and the established planning cannot be implemented. Although the current Urban Planning Law clearly stipulates that the administrative subject of urban planning implementation and management is the planning department, it is difficult for the current planning management system to correct the deviation of leaders in the guiding ideology of urban construction and to supervise the guiding role and legal effect of urban master planning. At present, most of those who violate the city planning law are basically the government. Under the current system, if the government violates the law, it is impossible or difficult for the planning authorities to resist and enforce the law against the "emperor" even if they have the courage to "give up who I am".

At the same time, the enforcement of urban planning has weakened. With the development of urban construction, the requirements of planning law enforcement are getting higher and higher, the tasks are getting heavier and heavier, and the importance is getting bigger and bigger, but the law enforcement power is getting weaker and weaker. In the reform of government institutions, planning departments have been abolished or planning personnel have been reduced inappropriately in many places, resulting in ineffective planning enforcement and even a law enforcement vacuum. Therefore, it highlights the contradiction between strengthening planning law enforcement and the lack of planning law enforcement.

At the same time, there is still a lack of effective and timely supervision institutions. The Urban Planning Law stipulates that "the competent department of urban planning has the right to supervise and inspect whether the construction projects in the urban planning area meet the planning requirements", indicating that the supervision and inspection of planning is also the responsibility of the competent department of planning. However, under the current system, it is difficult for the department to supervise and restrict urban and rural planning. At present, the supervision of planning management is mainly in the form of public opinion supervision, but it has obvious lag and will only be exposed when problems appear and reach a very serious level. Media opinion can indeed stop some illegal construction projects and solve some problems, but although some illegal projects have been stopped, their losses will never be recovered. For example, the above-mentioned damage to historical sites and cultural heritage cannot be recovered, and the loss of its economic and social benefits cannot be estimated by money.

Third, planning decisions are closed. China's urban planning decision-making is basically a closed working system. For a long time, planning, from preparation, revision, examination and approval to approval, has always been regarded as a process of simultaneous operation by administrative departments, and it is rarely announced to the public. Planning is limited to a small circle of leaders, experts and relevant departments. At present, power authority is far greater than knowledge authority. In planning decision-making, to a great extent, decision makers (leaders and departments) unilaterally act on decision-making objects (experts and related personnel), and there is almost no interaction between them. Experts are on the second line of decision-making. Moreover, the whole planning decision-making process is full of political views and conflicts of interest, which affects the correctness and rationality of planning decision-making. At present, the conflicts of interest between departments are mainly solved through financial budget, so departments compete for more resources, but it is impossible for administrative subjects to be fair in the process of resource allocation. Therefore, localism and sectarianism are common in the decision-making process, that is to say, urban planning has not played a role in coordinating various interest groups, so it is not surprising that interest subjects resort to black-box operation, and it is inevitable that individuals and groups will "rent-seeking". However, the maximization of individual and group interests does not mean the maximization of public interests, and urban planning representing public interests cannot embody and play the principle and role of fairness.

Fourth, the public participation in urban planning is not high. According to the viewpoint of S R. Anstin that public participation in urban planning is divided into three types and eight levels, public participation in urban planning in China is still in the stage of information participation, and the degree of participation is still at a low level. This is not because citizens are not enthusiastic about urban planning, but because planning authorities or other departments rarely publish planning information to the society, and citizens have no opportunity to participate in planning decisions. Even if the public can design a feasible planning scheme, the planning authorities refuse to accept their results for various reasons, making the publication of planning information a mere formality. For example, Southern Weekend reported on April 3, 2003 that Ren Junjie, a citizen of Zhengzhou, responded to the call of the municipal government for planning and reconstruction of Erqi Square and designed the reconstruction plan of Erqi Square. Through the way of "underground tunnel crossing and ground outer ring assistance", the planning scheme can effectively divert the crowded traffic, and make the original six-way intersection become a public leisure square of 50,000 square meters, and its design concept has been recognized by experts. It has won the support of thousands of citizens, but the planning and other departments ridiculed and insulted him on the grounds that he was "not qualified for planning", denied his design plan, and prepared to start the plan from a design unit in Shanghai. Although many departments in charge of planning require some non-planning experts and representatives to discuss the planning scheme together, experts and representatives cannot go against the wishes of the owners and agree to solve some technical problems that do not hurt feelings at most. Moreover, it is difficult to judge whether these experts and representatives can represent and reflect public opinion. The public's participation in urban planning is not high, and it is almost impossible to supervise the implementation of the planning, which makes a lot of social resources flow to the "face project".