Guide
Recently, the term "new quality productivity" has attracted wide attention from all walks of life. The development of new quality productivity is an intrinsic requirement and an important focus for promoting high-quality development. The 2024 government work report will "vigorously promote the construction of a modern industrial system and accelerate the development of new quality productivity" as the top priority, and a series of deployments have been made for this, which is also the first time that "new quality productivity" has been written into the government work report.
In the face of the accelerated development of new quality productivity, how do we view the relationship between new quality productivity and spatial planning? What adjustments and responses needs to be made in the urban and rural planning industry? What kind of changes and improvements need to be faced by planning practitioners? In response to these problems, Yuan Xin, executive director of the China Urban Planning Society and president of Tsinghua Tongheng Planning and Design Research Institute, shared his views and opinions.
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Ask:
In the overall context of the development of new quality productivity, from the perspective of urban and rural planning and construction, what do you think are new quality productivity, and how to understand new quality productivity?
Yuan Xin: Everyone is familiar with Marx's exposition on the productive forces and the relations of production, and the contradictory movement between the productive forces and the relations of production determines the general trend of social development. The interaction between productive forces and production relations is the most fundamental driving force for the development of human society.
If we draw a diagram and regard the productive forces and the relations of production as two forces with different directions, the vertical axis represents the productive forces and the horizontal axis represents the relations of production, and the combined force formed by the interaction between the productive forces and the relations of production can be understood as the main driving force of social development, and human society continues to develop in the direction of the line of the driving force of social development. The three elements of productive forces include labor force, labor tools, and labor objects, and the three elements of production relations include the form of ownership of the means of production, the mutual relations between laborers, and the distribution mechanism. When the force of the productive forces is greater, the direction of social development is dominated by the market, and when the force of production relations is greater, the government is more important. At different stages of social development, because of the difference in the magnitude of the two components, their resultant forces are slightly different, and the deviation between the phased goals of social development and the overall direction can be understood as the extra efforts made to overcome the main contradictions in society at this stage.
When it comes to the new quality of productive forces, it is essentially a question about the productive forces and the relations of production, and it is necessary to further explore the various elements of the productive forces and the relations of production, as well as what new contents or new characteristics have emerged in the process of interaction between the two.
Image from respondent reports
First, let's look at the trends in China's labor force in recent years. Looking back at the decade from 2011 to 2021, China's urbanization rate reached 50% in 2011, and since then, the rate of urbanization has gradually slowed down, our birth rate has begun to enter negative growth, the total population has entered a downward range, and the regional population distribution has gradually diverged. When these changes develop to a certain stage, there will be some turning indicators, creating new space requirements, as a planner must pay attention to the changing trend of the workforce.
Second, the innovation and improvement of labor tools is the main factor driving social development and the transformation of economic cycles. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, labor tools have undergone continuous innovation, from textile machinery, steam engines to gas turbines, scientific and technological progress has improved labor productivity, constantly changed the social production and lifestyle, and also changed the function and spatial structure of our cities. For example, before the Industrial Revolution, the factories in Britain were all small workshops, which were generally close to the river and relied on water power to operate; after the steam engine, the factories began to be close to the city, and the relationship with the city became closer, and the change of production mode directly changed the urban space; for example, after the advent of the automobile, the American city began to spread rapidly to the suburbs, becoming the spatial form of the American city. These are directly related to the impact of the evolution of tools on production and life.
The last point is the change in the object of labor. In the era of agricultural civilization, our most important factors of production are land and labor; in the industrial age, in addition to land and labor, the factors of production include oil, minerals, the most basic raw materials, capital, technology, etc.; with the rapid development of science and technology, especially the emergence of digital technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, the Internet, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing, data has become a new important asset, and has become the core factor of production in the era of digital economy.
Looking at the relations of production, the progress of information technology has brought about great changes in the relationship between people and between people and space. Today's office model tends to be "mobile and miniaturized", everyone brings a notebook, and remote work and business trips do not affect normal work, which has changed greatly compared with the previous model. At the same time, our market information is transmitted through the Internet, and the elements involved in the distribution are not only labor and capital, but also various resources such as intellectual property rights and data. All these changes, which have taken place in recent years, reflect the process of mutual adaptation between the relations of production and the productive forces.
Therefore, in the process of changing the productive forces and the factors of production relations, it is necessary to identify which elements are of epoch-making significance and which are advanced productive forces? The development of new quality productive forces does not mean that we should create a completely new kind of productive forces from today, but that the factors of productive forces have undergone some essential changes along with the progress of science and technology, and some "new characteristics and new contents" have emerged. The combination and development of these new elements will greatly promote the improvement of productivity, and our production relations need to actively adapt to these new quality productivity, and we must also actively debug for spatial planning, so as to create an appropriate space carrier and space governance model innovation for the development of new quality productivity.
Ask:
What kind of urban and rural space is needed for the development of new quality productive forces? In the face of new spatial production factors, how can we provide high-quality urban and rural space for the society?
Yuan Xin: How to implement the development of productivity and production relations into urban space, we must first understand the value of spatial planning.
Space is a container into which all the activities of the interaction between productivity and production relations need to be contained. With the advancement of urbanization, more and more people have entered the city life, with the advent of the aging society, what are the major changes in the space needs of these people? In the past, we paid attention to the needs of people as a whole, and entered the new stage of development, we should pay attention to the individual needs of each type of people, and even every person and every enterprise. As planners, we are responsible for providing space for production on the one hand, and on the other hand, we are concerned with the research and formulation of policies.
Image from respondent reports
Before the Industrial Revolution, Britain's family workshops were almost all "front shops and back factories", the changes in labor tools brought about by the Industrial Revolution improved production efficiency, but also changed the relationship between jobs and housing, and large machine production caused environmental and social problems; With the emergence of various new technologies, new products, new scenarios and new services, the industrial structure and spatial structure of the city are quietly changing, and the spatial relationship between residence and production in the past can no longer meet the needs of technological innovation. At this time, space production is related to the changes in the demand for production factors and the adjustment of production relations driven by new quality productivity, which requires us to have new supply in space.
The role of planning and management is not only to restrain the behavior of resource protection, but also to empower social progress and development. In the face of the need to develop new quality productivity, spatial planning will be more of a combination of innovative spatial elements, improve spatial efficiency, gather innovative people, stimulate innovation vitality, cultivate innovative industries, provide innovative application scenarios, and so on.
If it corresponds to the development of new quality productivity and the corresponding space production, we can call it "new quality urban space", which should adapt to high-quality modern life. The development of new quality of productive forces and the creation of new quality space are also mutually reinforcing. For example, in the past, in order to curb the destruction of nature by human activities, we could only delineate the scope of protection and prohibit all kinds of construction behaviors, but with the support of new quality productivity, we can minimize the impact of human activities on the environment, and allow certain human activities on the premise of ensuring natural and ecological sustainability, so as to create a more pleasant combination of spatial elements to meet social needs and promote economic development.
In some rural areas, with the development of modern agricultural technology and the diversification of farmers' income channels, agriculture, culture and tourism, The emergence of new economic scenarios such as farmhouses, the progress of agricultural production methods have alienated the close spatial relationship between rural areas and farmland, the development of tourism has narrowed the connection between villages and nature, and the popularization of distributed energy and sewage treatment facilities has also provided new technical support for rural development.
For some start-up innovative enterprises, they do not need to enter the industrial park far away from the city center, but prefer a small low-cost space in the city center, and at the same time can be compatible with small technical test functions, as well as the combination of urban functions brought about by the development of unmanned driving technology and the new demand for road transportation facilities. Therefore, there must be a relationship between space production and new quality productivity, which is mutually promoting, adapting and promoting each other. The new qualitative space is not a new spatial form, but a new combination of various spatial elements, supporting new development concepts and various new economic scenarios. Optimize the layout of various elements of productivity through new quality space production, coordinate the development of productivity and production relations, so as to generate new scenarios and new services, stimulate the vitality of urban and rural economy, realize a better life for the people, and promote high-quality social development.
Ask:
In the face of the above goals, what kind of changes and improvements will urban and rural planners undergo and what role will Tongheng play in this process as a university-based enterprise think tank?
Yuan Xin: First of all, planners should look for and follow the objective law between space and the development of new quality productive forces, and should not discuss space on the basis of space, but should consider the significance of space to economic and social development. With the support of new technologies, we should shift from land-based two-dimensional thinking to space-based three-dimensional, systematic and interconnected spatial planning thinking, combine space production and space use, and reconstruct the underlying logic of planning for the development of new quality productivity.
Once we have completed a blueprint, we should not only calculate the amount of construction and the scale of investment, but also the ability to calculate how much jobs and tax revenues can be added to the area, how much carbon emissions can be reduced, and whether the health of residents can be improved...... This is the goal of people-centered urbanization. If it cannot support the new economic scene, and there is no new economic vitality to enter, the value of spatial planning will be greatly reduced. When the underlying logic is smoothed out, the planner knows the direction of future efforts.
Secondly, our spatial governance also needs to adapt to the new needs of new quality productivity and spatial scenarios, which is also part of the adaptation of production relations. The industry needs to reach a consensus on how to better support or promote economic and social development through space production. In this process, the formulation of industry standards, guidelines, norms, etc., should combine space governance with new quality productivity and production relations, construct the spatio-temporal relationship between space and new manufacturing, new business forms and new services, and promote the formation of new quality production relations by connecting all elements for research and formulation. Can spatial governance evolve from "mu" to "cubic meter"? The object of spatial planning in the city can no longer be land use, but the three-dimensional space and its application scenarios and behaviors, the spatial base for the adaptation of production relations to productivity, and the full value of space.
For Tongheng, we must recognize the importance of building the underlying logic of planning, and strive to improve and expand our technical capabilities from service space planning to service social development. To insist on being an enterprise-type think tank in colleges and universities, we must have a more macro perspective, explore and try little by little, make a little prediction and professional capacity building forward, and keep up with the pace of development of the times. I think it would be very meaningful if we could achieve some exemplary results that could be scaled up.
Source of this article: Tsinghua Tongheng Planning Broadcast
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