Two PhD positions in ERC project - Collaborative Planning in China

The two PhD candidates will work on the ERC Starting Grant project CoChina “Collaborative Planning in China: Authoritarian Institutions, New Media, Power Relations, and Public Spheres”. The CoChina project is a 5-year research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC), and directed by Dr Yanliu Lin at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University. The project team is part of Spatial Planning Group within the Urban Futures programme of the department.
Collaborative planning has recently emerged in China to address conflicts of interest in urban renewal and environmental management. The internet is an influential platform that provides opportunities for the interactions between the government and citizens. However, the egalitarian principles that ground the collaborative planning theory call into question its validity in China. The aim of this project is to examine collaborative planning practices in China and identify the challenges to the assumptions of the theory about institutions, power relations, and public spheres. This ERC project will lead to a new understanding of collaborative planning in China, and a reconceptualization of collaborative planning theory to fit authoritarian contexts.