Governing cities through regions: Evolution of regional plans for the Yangtze River Delta mega city-region

The growth of regional plans in China since the new millennium has raised debates regarding the recentralization of the state in response to the crisis of urban entrepreneurialism. The Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region is a case in point for exploration. As the first regional plan of its kind, orchestrated over the YRD, two additional plans have been formulated for this region in the subsequent years. By analyzing the recurrent regional plan experiments in the YRD, this study identified two dominant features that characterized the current regional plan trend in China. The first is the special attention paid to the positioning of the regional territory in the national and international context. The second is the importance attached to the national policy delivery in multilevel government systems. This case study illustrates that the rise of regional plans made by the state does not indicate a departure from entrepreneurial governance. Instead, it represents a “nationalized” YRD entrepreneurial strategy, whereby the national aspirations are regionalized around the YRD. In addition, it manifests recurrent experiments for a governance fix by the state to regulate municipal developments via regional plans without fundamental structural reforms. Through regional plans, the state manages to govern the cities with strategic significance.