Public Participation? No Public! An Example of Tangshan Bay Eco-city

Abstract: The concept of Eco-city and the means of public participation in urban planning are receiving more and more attention in global urbanization and environmental discourse. However in China, comparing to the eco-city fever, public participation is ignored at a great extent. This thesis will explore public participation (and lack thereof) in eco-city planning in China by introducing the example of Tangshan Bay Eco-city and the experiences in Malmö Sweden. With a human ecology framework, this thesis employs an interdisciplinary methodological framework to address the question of social sustainability in a Chinese context, by answering the four questions of “phronetic plan research”.