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After more than 40 years of rapid development of reform and opening up, Shanghai has embarked on a new journey of accelerating the construction of a socialist modern international metropolis with world influence, continuing to explore a new path of high-quality development that is connotative, intensive and green, and promoting the "stability" of high-quality development with the "progress" of land elements. The exploration and practice of reducing the amount of inefficient construction land is to improve the level of efficient utilization of land resources, actively serve the construction of a new development pattern, and support the high-quality development of cities through the "reduction and revitalization" of land resources.
2024 is a crucial year to achieve the goals and tasks of the 14th Five-Year Plan, and it is also a ten-year time point for the exploration and implementation of the reduction of inefficient construction land. Since 2014, the reduction of inefficient construction land has completed the "reduction and slimming" outside the planned urban development boundary of about 114 square kilometers, and the city, district and town have overcome difficulties and coordinated to promote the reduction work, which has made substantial contributions to the optimization of the stock land use structure, the guarantee of the construction of important projects, the replenishment of new cultivated land space, and the overall planning of urban and rural green development. In order to summarize the work process of inefficient construction land reduction in Shanghai in the past ten years, a series of articles on the reduction of inefficient construction land in Shanghai have been launched, leading you to deeply decipher the impact of the reduction of inefficient construction land in the past ten years on the city, how to establish the reduction mechanism, what obstacles have been encountered and how to solve them, how to use the land after the reduction, and what are the typical practices and experiences.
In this issue, we will launch the first review of the reduction work, which will introduce the reduction practice of inefficient construction land in Shanghai in the past ten years from the dimensions of reduction background, overall strategy, path design, and implementation effectiveness.
Lock in the "slimming target"
Open a new chapter of "reduction development".
As the largest economic center city in mainland China, Shanghai has entered the post-industrialization stage earlier, and has faced many problems in urban development and land use, including the "tight constraints" of resources, population and environment, the scale of construction land is close to the limit, the contradiction between land supply and demand is prominent, and the layout and structure of land use are unreasonable. In 2015, the total amount of construction land in Shanghai has approached 3,100 square kilometers, accounting for about 45% of the land area, far exceeding the level of 20%-30% of international metropolises such as London, Paris and Tokyo, of which about 840 square kilometers of industrial and mining storage land, accounting for 27%, is 2-3 times that of Tokyo, New York and other cities, and about 15% of the construction land for public facilities and green squares As an important indicator to measure the livable living environment, the proportion of domestic land is low, which is lower than that of similar international metropolises, and the level of land use performance is low, and urban environmental problems have become a hard constraint restricting urban development. [Data from the text of the Shanghai Urban Master Plan (2017-2035)]
Figure 1: Proportion of construction land area to land area in Shanghai
In 2013, in order to improve the quality of urban development and the efficiency of land resources, Shanghai determined the basic land use strategy of "five quantity regulation and control" of total volume locking, incremental reduction, stock optimization, flow efficiency enhancement and quality improvement, closely focusing on the goal of "innovation-driven development and economic transformation and upgrading strategy", and guided land resource management to spatial resource management, which ran through "Shanghai 2035" In the concept of the overall planning, the planned construction land scale of 3,200 square kilometers will be locked as the total scale of Shanghai's future construction land control, and the bottom-line thinking will be strengthened.
In February 2014, the municipal government issued the "Several Opinions on Further Improving the Level of Land Conservation and Intensive Utilization in the City" (Hu Fu Fa (2014) No. 14), proposing the strategic decision of "forcing the transformation of urban development mode with the transformation of land use mode". The overall strategy and path design of implementability should take the reduction of inefficient construction land as an important carrier and platform for reconstructing the spatial governance order of stock and the high-quality utilization of land resources, so as to promote the realization of urban transformation and upgrading. [The reduction of inefficient construction land refers to the current construction land that does not meet the requirements of land spatial planning and has poor socio-economic and environmental benefits, and restores the production capacity of agricultural land or gives full play to the function of ecological land through land consolidation work such as demolition and reclamation]
Create a "Slimming Plan"
Consolidate the new measures of "reducing quantity and increasing efficiency".
The first round of inefficient construction land reduction was from 2015 to 2017, and the focus of the reduction was on the inefficient collective industrial land outside the planning urban development boundary (i.e., the "198 area"), and the relevant municipal departments jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Implementation of the "198" Regional Reduction in the City (Hu Gui Tu Zi Zong (2015) No. 88), which clarified the total reduction target, work requirements, supporting policies and guarantee mechanisms. [Area 198 refers to the existing industrial land outside the planned industrial zone and outside the planned concentrated construction area, with a total of about 198 square kilometers in the city, referred to as the 198 area; It flourished in the early days of reform and opening up, but with the development of the times, the characteristics of "three highs and one low" of high investment, high energy consumption, high pollution and low efficiency have also become increasingly apparent.
The second round of reduction of inefficient construction land is from 2018 to 2020, and the focus of the reduction is expanded from inefficient industrial land outside the planned urban development boundary to the reduction of homestead and other inefficient construction land, and the focus is on the planned ecological corridor area and the comprehensive environmental improvement area. At the municipal level, the "Implementation Opinions on the Relevant Policies for Afforestation of the "198" Reduction Plots in the Key Environmental Comprehensive Improvement Areas of the Municipality (Hu Lvrong (2016) No. 139), the "Notice on Several Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the High-quality Utilization of Land Resources in the City" (Hu Fu Gui (2018) No. 21) and the "198" Regional Reduction Municipal Fund Subsidy Management Measures" and other documents have been successively issued, further clarifying the requirements of the reduction work objectives, policy system, assessment management and other aspects.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the reduction of inefficient construction land covers the period from 2021 to 2025, and according to the provisions of the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Utilization and Protection of Natural Resources in Shanghai" (Hu Fu Ban Fa (2021) No. 22), during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the reduction of inefficient construction land will continue to be promoted, with an average annual reduction of 12-15 square kilometers, and the reduction will focus on the reduction of inefficient construction land in areas where permanent basic farmland is concentrated, water source protection areas, ecological corridor planning areas, land preparation guidance areas and other areas.
Figure 2: Timeline of the evolution of Shanghai's policy on the reduction of inefficient construction land
According to the implementation cycle of the reduction action, the urban area has refined the implementation path and policy measures of the reduction: first, adhere to the guidance of planning, and formulate a "multi-plan integration" plan for spatial transmission and layer-by-layer implementation. Through the territorial spatial planning of cities, districts and towns, the reduction task of the existing construction land outside the urban development boundary is clearly planned step by step, which fully guarantees the leading position of the thinking of "reduction development" in the planning and implementation of the city at all levels. The second is to establish a systematic policy and institutional framework and strengthen the application of the policy of "linking increase and decrease". Based on the idea of linking the increase and decrease of urban and rural construction land, we have deepened and formulated the linkage mechanism of land use plan of "reducing and increasing and decreasing". Except for major strategic projects of the state and the city and projects for which the municipal government has clarified the net increase in the space for the use of construction land, the land for other new projects shall be linked to the reduction work. The third is to build a "horizontal and vertical coordination" work model, and promote the formation of a multi-department coordination and integration of the work pattern. Horizontally it brings together policies and funds in various industries such as modern agricultural development, industrial structure adjustment, ecological environmental protection, water conservancy and water system construction, and greening forestry construction; vertically establishes a coordination mechanism for reduction work and a performance appraisal system for leading cadres of governments at all levels, and writes the annual target into the work report of the municipal government every year, transforming the reduction from a slogan and concept to a daily work mechanism led by the government, coordinated by departments, linked up and down, and shared with responsibility, and promotes the formation of a multi-departmental collaborative work pattern.
Stick to the "Slimming Action"
It has begun to show new results of "reduction and transformation".
Since 2014, through the implementation of 10 years of reduction of inefficient construction land, a total of about 114 square kilometers (including those that have been demolished) have been "reduced and slimmed" outside the planned urban development boundary. Among them, about 67 square kilometers of industrial, mining and storage land have been approved, about 14 square kilometers of homesteads, and about 11 square kilometers of other construction land, which have begun to show new results in optimizing the land use structure, balancing the pressure of cultivated land protection, and coordinating the green development of urban and rural areas. [The deadline for data statistics is December 31, 2023]
Figure 3: Comparison before and after the reduction and remediation of inefficient construction land
In terms of land use structure optimization, it is forced to transform and upgrade land use structure. In accordance with the principle of "reducing by use and increasing by reduction", the city has comprehensively established a refined linkage mechanism related to the reduction of new construction land. Since the implementation of the reduction, the city's land use plan management has continuously compressed the allocation of incremental construction land indicators. The vacated land use index fully guarantees the demand for all kinds of construction land for high-quality development of urban and rural areas, and realizes the benign structural optimization from increment-based to flow-oriented.
In terms of alleviating the pressure of cultivated land protection, the reduction of inefficient construction land solves the lack of reserve resources to supplement cultivated land. Under the guidance of land spatial planning, the construction land that does not meet the planning requirements and has poor economic and environmental benefits will be reduced to form a supplementary resource of new cultivated land. Up to now, the city has added more than 45 square kilometers of cultivated land through the reduction of inefficient construction land, which has solved the problem of lack of supplementary cultivated land reserve resources and high pressure on cultivated land protection in Shanghai.
In terms of coordinating the green development of urban and rural areas, the reduction of inefficient construction land will improve the green ecological environment in the suburbs. Through the demolition and remediation of inefficient construction land in key blocks such as ecological corridors and water source protection areas, polluting enterprises will be removed, and the regional "detoxification" will be forced from the source, so as to promote the fundamental improvement of the ecological environment in suburban areas. Through the reduction of inefficient construction land, the city has built more than 35 square kilometers of new forest land, which has strongly supported the construction of ecological civilization in the city.
With the spirit of "daring to innovate and challenge", it has changed the traditional land development mode based on extension and expansion, established a new concept of land resource allocation of "connotation development, flexible adaptation, and linkage between increase and decrease", and promoted the optimization and improvement of urban governance mode and the innovation and transformation of resource utilization mode. In the current process of accelerating Shanghai's construction of a socialist modern international metropolis with world influence, land is an important carrier of high-quality urban development, and the foundation and guarantee for the city to "stabilize growth" and "stable investment" and develop new quality productivity. In the face of the limited shortage of land resources, the reduction of inefficient construction land still needs to continue to explore innovative measures, open up a new situation of "reduction and efficiency increase", continue to improve the level of land use performance, and better promote the positive interaction between land resource governance and regional high-quality development.
(Source: Shanghai Land Consolidation)