Urban Geography

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The trials of China’s technoburbia: the case of the

Future Sci-tech City Corridor in Hangzhou

Julie T. Miao, Nicholas A. Phelps, Tingting Lu & Cassandra C. Wang

To cite this article: Julie T. Miao, Nicholas A. Phelps, Tingting Lu & Cassandra C. Wang (2019):
The trials of China’s technoburbia: the case of the Future Sci-tech City Corridor in Hangzhou,
Urban Geography, DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2019.1613138

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1613138

Published online: 12 May 2019.

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URBAN GEOGRAPHY
https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1613138

The trials of China’s technoburbia: the case of the Future Sci-tech

City Corridor in Hangzhou
a a b
Julie T. Miao , Nicholas A. Phelps , Tingting Lu and Cassandra C. Wangc
a
Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; bSchool of
International and Public Affairs & China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
Shanghai, China; cSchool of Earth Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Set against the wider background of global suburbanization, this paper Received 14 August 2018
contributes to the emerging literature on the formation of technoburbia Accepted 24 April 2019
in China, and more importantly, the potential “urban contradictions” KEYWORDS
accompanying this process. Through a bottom-up empirical exploration Suburbanization;
of the Future Sci-tech City Corridor in Hangzhou and its embedded technoburbia; urban
Featured Town initiative in particular, we observe how the future of contradictions; featured
technoburbia in China is by no means free from similar challenges in towns; China; Hangzhou
housing affordability and labor stratification. However, these contra-
dictions are managed entirely differently in China. Nevertheless, the
highly planned nature of China’s technoburbia also rubs up against
political decentralization, demographic change and economic upgrad-
ing, implying significant trials and tribulations along the way.

1. Introduction
The terms “edge city” (Bontje & Burdack, 2005; Garreau, 1991), “technoburbia”
(Fishman, 1987) and “post-suburbia” (Kling, Olin, & Poster, 1995; Phelps, Ballas,
Parsons, & Dowling, 2006; Phelps, Wood, & Valler, 2010; Teaford, 1997) have been
used to capture aspects of the new urbanity of outer suburbanization in the United
States and to a much lesser extent Europe. Of these, the term “technoburb” perhaps best
captures the greater balance between high-tech work and residence of this new urbanity
than found in the stereotypical residential suburb, and it is a term around which we
center our discussion – essentially an informal comparative study – of the contempor-
ary nature of suburbanization in the case of Hangzhou, China.
These labels from western scholarship might be thought of dubious value when
applied to the Chinese context (ChengLiu, He, & Shaw, 2017). But after several phases
of the suburban expansion in China, the label of technoburbia may be apposite. The
earliest phases of post-reform suburbanization involved large scale, high-density hous-
ing and industrial parks in order to decongest central cities, but these were planned in
parallel and rarely coordinated as part of a suburban whole. Subsequent waves of
suburbanization with the liberalization of the housing market and the promulgation
of city master plans from the late 1990s (Shen & Wu, 2013) imply that contemporary

CONTACT Julie T. Miao Julie.miao@unimelb.edu.au Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University
of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 J. T. MIAO ET AL.

urbanization more closely resembles the technoburb pattern found in the United States.
In many Chinese cities, employment decentralization has already taken place within
designated industrial parks, economic development zones and high-tech or science
parks, sometimes preceding and sometimes planned as part of major new township
extensions (Wu and Phelps, 2011). Suburbanization continues to evolve rapidly with
housing system reform and privately developed suburban communities (Shen & Wu,
2012) driving an unbundling of the functional integration found in typical danweis –
the self-contained work unit communities that used to dominate the urban landscape of
China (Bian, 2005). In the cities of China’s eastern coast, suburbanization has been
accompanied by structural transformation towards advanced manufacturing and service
economies. It has also been associated with the broader and intensified capitalization of
urban land (Lin & Yi, 2011; Liu et al., 2017) in which the extent of residential and
employment separation as part of suburbanization has drawn the attention of Beijing.
In 2016 a national announcement promoted a new suburban configuration called
“Featured Towns” (Ministry of Housing and Construction, China, 2016), which empha-
sizes a stronger marriage between industrial and residential estates than previously was
the case and appears to strive for the technoburb compromise found in the United
States.
Yet, despite apparent similarities, China’s emerging technoburban landscape differs
from that of the United States in important respects, especially regarding the impor-
tance of central, provincial and local government entrepreneurism in this develop-
ment process (Miao & Phelps, 2018; Shen & Wu, 2013). Thus, deeper explorations are
needed to identify the process and consequences of China’s publicly engineered
technoburbia. In the Anglo-Saxon context, individualism, privatisation and deregula-
tion can result not only in social and ethnic segregation (Trinh Vo & Yu Danico,
2004), gentrification, and inefficient planning controls and solutions (Aring, 1999) but
also traffic congestion, rising housing and other living costs, environmental degrada-
tion and emergent antigrowth politics which Saxenian (1983) identified as the “urban
conradictions” of high-tech suburbanization Silicon Valley. Does the highly planned
nature of China’s urban and economic transformation (Zhou & Ma, 2010), made
concrete in new suburban extensions including the Featured Town initiative, suggest
a future that is free from the most severe urban contradictions, especially housing
affordability, found in the west? Or will the unintended effects of planning, combined
with those of political decentralization, demographic change, and economic upgrad-
ing, mean that China’s technoburbia will be beset by significant trials and
tribulations?
In this paper, we exemplify the trials of China’s technoburbia with reference to
Hangzhou’s Future Sci-tech City Corridor (HFSTCC). It is by no means exceptional in
being inspired by Silicon Valley, but it is the home of the Chinese e-commerce giant
Alibaba and the origin point of the national Featured Town policy. As such it is perhaps
the best example to examine whether the social and economic consequences of China’s
technoburbia are any different to, or any more manageable than those in the United
States. In what follows, we first review the literature on technoburbia, drawing mainly
on material from the United States. We go on to describe the methods used to collect
the secondary and original empirical material on which this paper is based. We then
provide a narrative on the origins and distinctive technoburban mix of the HFSTCC
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 3

area including its “Featured Towns”. In conclusion, we observe the partial absorption,
displacement and amelioration of some of the contradictions accompanying state-led
suburbanization in China and some of the intriguing comparative research questions
they raise.

2. The trials of technoburbia: at home and abroad

For Fishman (1987, p. 28), the typical Anglo-Saxon suburbs that had emerged by the
end of the 19th century were characterised by: a functional dependence on the city
core; the demographic dominance of the middle classes within a largely homogenous
residential area; and an environment that created an aesthetic “marriage of town and
county”. Powerful technologies of decentralization, initially those centered on “auto-
mobility” and later those centered on information and communication technologies,
alongside active Federal mortgage and infrastructure policies, facilitated the mass
residential suburbanization with which the post-war success of the US economy was
inextricably interlinked (Phelps, 2010; Walker, 1981). Yet this “spatial fix” for US
capitalism was also not without its contradictions (such as the extreme separation of
land uses (Harvey, 1985), the fiscal implications of paying for the public services
demanded by residents (Teaford, 1997)) which were partially resolved in the sub-
urbanization of high-tech industries as well as the evolution of suburbs into post-
suburbs (Phelps, 2015; Sun & Ma, 1997; Teaford, 1997) or technoburbs (Fishman,
1987).

2.1. The technoburban fix and its contradictions in the United States

The label “technoburbia” perhaps best captures this peculiar fusion of high-tech
employment and residence in favored suburban expanses which “loosened the ties
that once bound the urban functions of society to tightly defined cores” in the United
States (Fishman, 1987, p. 29). In particular, the “single basic principle in the structure of
the technoburb . . . is the renewed linkage of work and residence” (Fishman, 1987,
p. 190). The technoburb thus emerged as a viable socioeconomic unit. “In complete
contrast to the residential or industrial suburbs of the past, these new (perimeter) cities
contain along their superhighways all the specialised functions of a great metropolis –
industry, shopping malls, hospitals, universities, cultural centres and parks” (Fishman,
1987, p. 29). Perhaps more importantly, the greenery and land availability in techno-
burbs offered the most congenial “homes” to high-tech industries and their well-
educated and highly paid knowledge workers.
Yet by the time that Fishman (1987) was writing, some of technoburbia’s very own
contradictions had become apparent (Saxenian, 1983). Although planned in detail as
myriad discrete university, industry and residential developments, the essentially un-
planned nature of technoburbia calls forth new institutions at the suburban regional
scale if it is not to fall victim to important urban contradictions. Here, then, important
problems of collective action present themselves as a result of conflicts between capital
accumulation and personal freedom, on the one hand, and collective welfare and public
externalities, on the other. “Silicon Valley” was perhaps the quintessential “technoburb”
concentrating high-tech jobs and supporting industries such as venture capitalists in the
4 J. T. MIAO ET AL.

United States. However, Saxenian (1983) highlighted the dark side of Silicon Valley
derived from the inextricable linkage between the semiconductor industry and its
regional growth. Among these urban contradictions were the breakdowns of housing
market and transport systems, environmental degradation, increasing social segregation
and the associated rise of anti-growth movements. Other social challenges such as
gender bias, gentrification and crimes, have also been aired in the media since with
the maturing of Silicon Valley and other technoburbs in the United States. The question
is, does this “dark side” of life also apply in the case of China’s technoburbia?

2.2. The rise of China’s technoburbia?

Academic literature on edge cities (Bontje & Burdack, 2005) and post-suburbia (Phelps
et al., 2006) in Europe has sought not to overextend these concepts outside the United
States. Yet, curiously there are enough similarities between Chinese suburbanization
dynamics and those in the United States – fiscal decentralization, massive infrastruc-
tural investment and incentivization, and licensing of land development at urban
peripheries – for the limited and fragmented extant discussion on China to allude to
the potential relevance of the technoburb concept (Chen, 2009; Cheng et al., 2017; Wu
& Phelps, 2008). Moreover, policy discussion regarding “Featured Towns” as a new
urban growth model in China (Miao & Phelps, 2019) now centers specifically on the
sorts of work–life balance signaled in Fishman’s (1987) technoburb. In sum, while
superficially similar in terms of their physical appearance and to a lesser extent their
environmental contradictions, the economic and social contradictions and drivers of
these technoburban forms appear to diverge (Table 1).
Studies document high-tech industry development in Asia set against a context of
often very rapid urbanization (see, for example, Altenburg, Schmitz, & Stamm, 2008;
Das & Lam, 2016; Miao, 2012; Yeoh & Wong, 2010; Yeung, 2014). Yet dedicated studies
on the relevance of “technoburbia” and “postsuburbia” remain limited and have tended
to report on the megacities of Beijing (Wu & Phelps, 2011; Zhao, 2013), Shanghai (Tian,
Ge, & Li, 2017; Wu & Phelps, 2008) and Guangzhou (Cheng et al., 2017; Jiang, 2012),
with studies on its interior land highly limited in comparison (Feng & Zhou, 2005).
However, the pattern emerging more broadly across China has been one of the conjoint
efforts at promoting industrial upgrading with efficient land usage (Cheng et al., 2017;
Zou & Zhao, 2018) leading to enhanced planning for the marriage of industrial and
residential developments than previously had been the case. The transformation of
industrial parks into new towns of some description has been a concrete effort in this
regard (Liu & Bu, 2013; Yuan & Wang, 2010). One underlying reason for bringing more
urban functions into these remote and monofunctional parks is to alleviate their
apparent social impacts (Shin, 2016) and appease the resultant activist movements
(Shin, 2013). Such transformation thus bears important but still emergent implications
for the precise nature of China’s suburbanization.
The strong ideological and financial support from multiple tiers of governments in
China, along with the planned nature of its suburban development, may imply an
emerging technoburban landscape less contradictory than that encountered in the
United States. Yet extant studies seem to suggest that high-tech suburbanization is
hardly free from various social issues such as social exclusion (Das & Lam, 2016)
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 5

Table 1. Key characteristics of technoburbs in the US and China.

US
Physical appearance Suburban road network linking coarse grain Urban grid road network with coarse grain of
of numerous self-contained developments.
Low-rise, low-density development of widely Medium-rise and medium density
separated land uses set in a high amenity
environment generating a balance
between work and residence at an urban
regional scale.
Contradictions (1) Economic. Competitive processes of
industrial evolution prone to periodic
business cycle and structural crises.
Significant traffic congestion with
planning and transportation infrastructure
lagging development.
(2) Social and spatial segregation as an
unavoidable consequence of economic
growth and inexorably rising land and
property prices.
(3) Environmental. Growth machine logic of
land development threatens
environmental capacity and amenity.
Growth drivers and Capital accumulation and land speculation by Capital accumulation and land speculation by
mechanisms developers; licensed with ideological and
regulatory support from local government;
little or no strategic emphasis of local
government; contested by anti-growth
politics; modest tax revenues accruing to
local governments.
Source: the authors.
China
blocks of self-contained developments.
commercial development, high-rise and
high-density residential development with
mixed land uses at scale of buildings and
new Featured Towns seeking a balance
between work and residence within and
between planned high-tech developments.
(1) Economic. Local government planned
processes of industrial upgrading prone
to adverse selection and structural crises.
Significant traffic congestion generated
by, and overtaking, advanced planning
and infrastructure – calling forth further
planning and infrastructure investment.
(2) Social. Labour stratification, spatial and
social segregation, partly controlled by
regulation of land and property prices,
partly absorbed in overcrowding, and
partly displaced to other districts or
nearby villages.
(3) Environmental. Growth machines logic of
land development threatens
environmental capacity and amenity.
developers; led by local government land
annexation and conversion, infrastructure
investment, business incentives and strong
ideological and regulatory support;
significant tax revenues accruing to local
governments; strong strategic emphasis of
local governments to effect industrial
upgrading with rhetoric of better work–life
balance; absence of anti-growth politics.

resulting from land speculation and a lack of housing uafforability (Miao, 2017). In
short, the trials of technoburbia in the Chinese context remain an open empirical
question to which we now turn in the remainder of this paper.

3. Methods
The paper is based on exploring the single case study of Hangzhou Future Sci-tech City
Corridor (HFSTCC), which lies to the west of the original historical core of Hangzhou
city (see Figure 1 which shows the HFSTCC area, the main high-tech oriented Featured
Towns and key pieces of infrastructure). We offer what can be described as an informal
comparative study – making use and exploring the relevance of the US-originated
concepts of technoburbia (Fishman, 1987) and the urban contradictions of high-tech
growth (Saxenian, 1983) in the Chinese context. Academic and policy commentary is
replete with thoughts of the replicability of high-tech growth models such as Silicon
Valley, but it is important to acknowledge the context-specific nature of such growth. It
is such context specificity that suggests the suitability of the case study method (Yin,
6 J. T. MIAO ET AL.

Figure 1. The Hangzhou Future Sci-tech City Corridor.

Source: compiled by the authors.

1994). This does not mean that the insights from case studies cannot be generalized or
have wider significance (Flyvbjerg, 2006). As a case of technoburbia, HFSTCC is
perhaps the best contemporary example in China given that the concept was inspired
by the former Provincial leader’s visit to Silicon Valley, the presence of one of China’s
leading tech companies Alibaba, and the notoriety achieved by several “Featured
Towns” – the new urban planning model pioneered in Zhejiang province and elevated
to national policy status (Zou & Zhao, 2018; Miao & Phelps, 2019).
In order to recount the origin and conditions of this high-tech suburban corridor, we
draw on secondary data in the form of planning documents and other media sources as
well as a series of interviews with experts from the government, private and university
sectors. It is important to note that Featured towns do not coincide with the admin-
istrative boundaries upon which official secondary data are based. It is therefore
especially difficult to assemble reliable quantitative data on aggregate population and
business dynamics of these new districts. Some quantitative data is collected but is
closely held by the relevant arms of government and private companies managing
Featured Towns. Of necessity, then, we relied heavily on interviews and Internet-
based media sources (such as Baidu and China Net) whose veracity is far from certain.
We conducted a total of 27 interviews in September 2017, April–May and October–
November 2018. The interviews lasted from between 30 and 90 minutes with the
majority being recorded. We achieved a balance of interviews across the relevant public
and private sector organizations active in the development of HFSTCC. These included
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 7

interviews with: different tiers of governments including city and district officials but
also the HFSTCC management committee; start-up high-tech companies, architecture,
planning and design consultancies, property developers, and academics from univer-
sities. In this paper, we draw on the most relevant interviews.
Interviews with elites present their own challenges including for example the power
imbalance and the positionality of the researcher (Harvey, 2011). The challenges here
are arguably magnified in China given the importance of personal guanxi. However, the
breadth and depth of the interview material obtained in this study compared favorably
to previous field experiences of the authors. This research focused solely on expert
opinions deemed appropriate to the concerns of this paper. We did not extend our
research at this stage to the population at large and in particular to marginalized
populations subject to relocation for redevelopment as is often the case with high-
tech real estate developments (Bunnell, 2004; Das, 2015; Shin, 2016). This is a weakness
of the present research from an analytical and normative point of view, since it is
important that the experiences and views of marginalized communities are heard and
incorporated adequately into urban planning processes.

4. Hangzhou’s Future Sci-tech City Corridor

Hangzhou, located 180 km southwest of Shanghai, is the capital city of Zhejiang
province. It is regarded as one of the six ancient capitals in China with its significance
dating back to the Qin Dynasty (222BC), when it was described in glowing terms by
Marco Polo. For one of our interviewees, the prospects for Hangzhou in modern China
are governed significantly by this legacy of history, culture and high environmental
amenity when compared with the lack of history and culture of, for example, Shenzhen
(Interview: Professor, School of Public Affairs, 2 May 2018).
With 13.2 percent of the provincial population, Hangzhou generated a GDP of 1.13
trillion RMB, 23.9 percent of the provincial total in 2016, and ranked the top 10 among
the 100 major cities. Its utilized foreign investment was 7.21 billion USD, contributing to
41.0 percent of the figure generated by the whole province (Hangzhou Statistics Bureau,
2017a). Of more significance here for understanding the peculiarities of our case is the
“Zhejiang model” of development, captured more specifically in the “Wenzhou model”
(Interview: Professor, School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, 2 May 2018).1 The
“Wenzhou model” (Wei, Wangming, & Wang, 2007) differs from the “Sunan Model”,
which in contrast is powered by township and village enterprises, and is often described
as “cadre capitalism” or “local state corporatism”, due to the strong intervention of the
local government (Baidu Encyclopedia, 2016). The basis of “Wenzhou model” and
“Zhejiang Model” in general on its booming domestic enterprises also distinguishes it
from the “Huanan Model”, which stands out for the dominant presence of foreign
investment (Yamazaki, 2011). As one of the early-mover provinces in China’s open-
door era, Zhejiang is well known for its active private enterprises. Even at the peak era of
socialism, the industrial output of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) only contributed to
61 percent of the provincial total, which had declined to 5 percent in 2015. Among its
1.19 million enterprises, only 1 percent were controlled by the state, whereas the bulk of
94.6 percent were private share-holding companies (Zhejiang Statistics Bureau, 2016).
8 J. T. MIAO ET AL.

By 2016, the total urban area of Hangzhou was 4876 km2 and the land area of the
municipality was 16,596 km2 (Hangzhou Statistics Bureau, 2017b). Such extensive land
reservation, as in other Chinese cities (Miao & Hall, 2014; Wu & Gar-On Yeh, 1997;
Wu & Zhang, 2007), is mainly derived from land annexation. By 2018 there had been
six such readjustments. Especially in 1996 when seven townships from Yuhang and
Xiaoshan counties were merged with the municipality, which increased Hangzhou’s
land coverage from 430 km2 to 684 km2 (Feng & Zhou, 2005). In 2001, the whole
counties of Yuhang and Xioashan were absorbed. In 2014 and 2017, Fuyang and Lin’an
counties were absorbed by Hangzhou, respectively, further increasing Hangzhou’s land
coverage to 16,596 km2.
Within this enlarged city-region territory, a geographically uneven process of sub-
urbanization has been put in motion in the 1980s and accelerated since the 1990s (Feng
& Zhou, 2005). Comparing land usage maps of 1995 and 2005, Yue, Liu, and Fan (2013)
identified that residential suburbanization had occurred primarily in the towns of
Jiubao and Kangqiao to the north of the city; whereas industrial expansions were
clustered in the Hangzhou Economic and Technology Development Zone (covering
Xiasha Town to the northeast), Puyan and Changhe towns (two annexed towns south of
the Qiantang River). Since this time, the suburbanization process has shifted markedly
to the west of Hangzhou beginning with the construction of the new university campus
of Zhejiang University since 2001 in Sandun Town and now forming an eastern focal
point to the HFSTCC, stretching for 30 km and occupying 224 km2 of land within
Yuhang and Xihu districts. As a mixture of corporate and university campuses, hosting
five featured towns with commercial housing and offices set amongst protected wetland
reserves, HFSTCC closely resembles Fishman’s (1987) technoburbia in land use, mor-
phological and, to some extent, visual terms (see Figure 2). However, from its origins
and in its development, this slice of China’s technoburbia has been altogether more
planned than its US counterpart with implications for the understanding and partial
resolution of its urban contradictions in policy rhetoric and practice.

Figure 2. The pastoral landscape of Hangzhou Future Sci-tech City Corridor.

Source: authors’ photograph.
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 9

4.1. The new urbanity that Alibaba built?

While Alibaba’s importance to the development of HFSTCC can hardly be understated,
it is more accurate to invoke four pillars of HFSTCC’s success. First is the intense
government focus on this area. According to one of our interviewees, the causal
relationship of urban contradictions to high-tech-led urbanization in Hangzhou’s
technoburbia was precisely the reverse of that found in the United States. In a model
more akin to the railway companies development of the US frontier towns and
London’s “metroland” (Ward, 1998), transport and spatial planning, including the
liberal spread of Featured Towns within the HFSTCC area, have been the instruments
used by city and district governments to enhance speculative land development, the
revenue from which would then flow back to governments for their subsequent invest-
ment (Interview: Professor, Zhejiang University of Technology, 25 April 2018).
The idea to promote high-tech growth and associated urbanization to the western
periphery of Hangzhou city came from Zhejiang provincial government (Interview:
Professor, Zhejiang University of Technology, 25 April 2018), as a result of visits by
provincial leaders to Silicon Valley from the 1990s onwards (Interviews: HFSTCC
Committee, 26 April 2018; Venture capital company of returnees, 28 April 2018).
Silicon Valley was first invoked in the development of a high-tech zone in Xiaoshan
in the 1990s. It was invoked again more recently in the case of the HFSTCC. The
provincial government dealt with the then separate city of Yuhang to encourage the
relocation of Alibaba to the west of Hangzhou (Interview: Professor, School of Public
Affairs, Zhejiang University, 2 May 2018). The vision of HFSTCC was likened to the
gambles that provincial and city government leaders across China typically have made;
such gambles being at once both personal and involving the wider provincial and city
communities concerned (Interview: Deputy Chairman, Zhejiang University Small and
Medium Sized Enterprise Association, 7 May 2018).
Second, Alibaba’s role is matched by that of Zhejiang University and the “Zhejiang
business model” as the other three non-government pillars underpinning high-tech growth
in Hangzhou (Professor, School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, 2 May 2018).
Alibaba is one of a few large domestic companies with a presence in the Hangzhou city-
region economy. Others include the Chinese car maker Geely. While our interviewees
(Interview, Director, Returnees Venture Capital Company, 28 April 2018) were clear that
economic growth and urbanization along this corridor of Hangzhou was not due solely to
Alibaba, they also agreed on the importance of the company to a host of effects more
recently – from attracting overseas returnees and the formation of new start-up companies
(Professor and Deputy Chairman, Zhejiang University Small and Medium Enterprise
Association, 7 May 2018) to enhancing local housing prices. Moreover, from the outset,
the planning of HFSTCC has been significantly oriented to capturing these spillovers not
only from Zhejiang University’s new campus at the eastern end of the corridor but also
from Alibaba with its headquarters in the center of the corridor and its new research
institute campus planned at the extreme west of the corridor.
Within the HFSTCC area, five Featured Towns play a strategic role as they were
intended to concentrate and offer agglomeration benefits to the numerous small
enterprises that make up the Zhejiang or Wenzhou business model. As one informed
commentator described it, government action and incentives have been necessary in the
10 J. T. MIAO ET AL.

first instance to seduce local business relocations from across Hangzhou. In the case of
Dream Town described below, these actions have by now stimulated a distinct business
atmosphere or at least a measure of fame such that this Featured Town is now capable
of attracting investment nationwide (Deputy Chairman, Zhejiang University Small and
Medium Sized Enterprise Association, 7 May 2018).

4.2. Featured towns: a distinctive Chinese technoburban spatial fix?

To avoid the “middle-income trap”, Beijing is exploring new growth engines proactively,
assisted by the entrepreneurialism of its “local state capitalism” (Keith, Lash, Arnoldi &
Rooker, 2014). Among those local initiatives that gained enthusiasm from private and
public actors, “Featured Towns” are the latest innovation. In September 2016, a Notice on
encouraging “Featured Towns” jointly issued by the Ministries of Housing & Construction,
Finance, and Reform & Development Committee proposed to invest in 1000 Featured
Towns that were competitive in tourism, trading, modern manufacturing, education, high-
tech, culture and quality of life by 2020 (Ministry of Housing and Construction, China,
2016). In October, the first group of 127 Featured Towns in 32 provinces were nominated,
followed by another 276 a year later (China Net, 2017). These Featured Towns are supposed
to shoulder the tasks of promoting urbanization in towns and villages, stimulating indus-
trial upgrading, and coordinating urban-rural development.
Three immediate characteristics of the Featured Towns echo Fishman (1987)’s
technoburb metaphor. Spatially, Featured Towns are based on townships2 outside the
existing metropolitan centers. The morphology of land use in these Featured Towns is
diverse with a mixture of industry, office, leisure, infrastructure, residential and green
space. Socially, Featured Towns emphasize work–life balance and a good environment
for living. Yet what we cannot easily observe are the political rationales, economic
structures and urban consequences of these Featured Towns.
It is important to recognize the Zhejiang origin of this national policy and the notoriety
of Featured Towns found in the HFSTCC area. The Featured Towns of HFSTCC them-
selves now constitute an important line of business for a series of local actors. These include
for example, the management Company Greenroot, which hosts thousands of visitations to
Dream Town (Public Relations Officer, Greenroot, 2 May 2018), and the Architectural
Design & Research Institute of Zhejiang University Co, Ltd (UAD), an 870 employee,
strong commercial company of Zhejiang University. An estimated 30 percent of UAD’s
business is currently generated through work in other Featured Towns nationwide (Senior
Architect, UAD, 3 May 2018).
Based on anecdotes from media sources (Souhu, 2016; Xia, 2015), the term “Featured
Town” was coined by the then Governor of Zhejiang when he visited the Hangzhou Yunqi
(or Cloud) Town in 2014. According to our interviews, he gained inputs and the idea was
codified from the Zhejiang Province Planning Institute (Professor, Zhejiang University of
Technology, 25 April 2018). Convinced by its economic and social potentials, proactive place
marketing was underway to draw the attention of the central government, underlining the
significance of multi-scalar policy mobilization by local entrepreneurial states in China
(Miao, 2018; Xu, 2016). A local guideline on accelerating Featured Towns within Zhejiang
province was issued in May 2015 which declared the government’s intention to cultivate 100
Featured Towns that combine the development of industry, culture and tourism, and
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 11

coordinate production, living and environmental protection (Zhejiang Government, 2015).

In September 2015, the Deputy Chairman of the National Development and Reform
Committee gained a favorable impression from visiting Featured Towns in Zhejiang. In
December 2015, Xi Jinping confirmed the potential of Featured Towns, especially their
contribution towards economic upgrading. Under the endorsement of the central govern-
ment, Zhejiang identified Featured Towns as its new growth model in a local Guideline on
Constructing Featured Towns issued in January 2016, promising to invest 500 billion RMB
($76.8 billion) within 3 years (CCTV, 2016).
By 2014, a total of 37 provincial-level Featured Towns were approved, nine of
which are located in Hangzhou. They could be further divided into two types. The
first draws upon unique local resources and includes the Tea Town in Xihu District,
Health Town in Tonglu and Foundation Town in Shangcheng District. The other
group is specialized in information technology, many of which are closely connected
with Alibaba Group though not all are within the HFSTCC area (Figure 1). They
include Dream Town in Xuhang District; Silicon Town in Fuyang District; Yunqi (or
Cloud) Town in Xihu District, Cloud Manufacturing Town in Linan District; and
Smart Town in Jianggan district. Table 2 summarises the key features of these towns.
In what follows we focus on two relatively advanced Featured Towns to give a flavor
of the variable contributions to resolving the urban contradictions of China’s
technoburbia.

4.2.1. Dream town

Dream Town is not a separately planned new town but an interior zone within HFSTCC,
conforming to the “parks within park” configuration found in China (Miao & Hall, 2014).
It is perhaps the most famous Featured Town in China and has enjoyed support from all
levels of government (Deputy Chairman, Zhejiang University Small and Medium Sized
Enterprise Association, 7 May 2018). The idea of Dream Town was laid down in
August 2014 by the provincial and city governments, and covered 3 km2. Dream Town
shoulders important missions of “becoming the highland of global Internet enterprises”
through “building a new model of public innovation” (Zhejiang Government, 2016). Its
conceptual plan (tendered by NITA Group from the Netherlands), envisioned a mixture of
heritage, culture, tourism, industries and living functions. Among the 181-ha construction
land, 49.3 percent was commercial usage, 50.0 percent was for housing and public facilities.
Yet the construction space of the latter counted for 53.1 percent, surpassing commercial
(46.2 percent) and the upper limit in the national standard (25.0 ~ 40.0 percent). When the
authors visited this site, a total of 170,000 m2 construction space was completed, including
an Internet Village, Angels Fund Village and an Enterpriser Market. Four housing devel-
opment clusters were planned.
Examining Dream Town’s case-flow table (Baidu Book, 2014), one can detect the
working of land finance in constructing this technoburb as in other instances (Liu et al.,
2017; Wu, 2002). In this process, Hangzhou local government and its affiliated devel-
opment companies such as the Cangqian Ancient Street Comprehensive Protection
Development Co., Ltd., prepared the physical infrastructures, public transport and
office space, and Hangzhou Future City Management Committee works as the operator
(Hu, 2016). Besides offering working spaces, other leisure and social facilities such as
cafes and exhibition halls were developed. Part of Dream Town’s attraction is the
 12

Table 2. Profiles of selected featured towns in Hangzhou.

Developer Initiated Land area Planning targets Industrial sectors Status of 2017 Key themes
Dream Future High-tech March 2015 3.5 km2: (1) 10,000 Information (1) 11,000 (1) Internet +;
Town City Committee; (1) 0.6 km2 residential; population; technology employees; (2) business
Yuhang district (2) 0.9 km2 commercial & (2) 300 funders; industry, (2) 420 investors incubator;
office; (3) 2,000 particularly: and incubators (3) innovation
(3) 0.2 km2 educational companies; (1) Internet industry; involved, e.g. industry.
J. T. MIAO ET AL.

land; (4) 3 billion Yuan (2) technology and Alibaba,

(4) 2.0 km2 others investments; finance industry. Sequoia
(5) central of Capital, Angel
HFSTCC Funds,
500Startups,
Plug&Play;
(3) 810 registered
companies；
(4) 1,140
programmes.
Yunqi Alibaba Group and October 2011 2.4 km2: (1) 5,800 Cloud computing (1) Established 481 (1) combine internet+
(Cloud) Zhuantang (1) 0.2 km2 residential; Population; industry, companies; with financial
Town Science Park; (2) 0.6 km2 office; (2) to increase 7,345 including (2) attracted capital +;
Xihu district (3) 0.6 km2 commercial; employments. (1) APP Alibaba, (2) Ali Cloud provides
(4) 0.2 km2 research use; development; Foxconn, and a platform for
(5) 0.8 km2 km others. (2) network games; Intel; innovations;
(3) Internet finance; (3) eight billion (3) the annual Cloud
(4) data mining. Yuan output Computing
value in 2016; Conference;
(4) established (4) the first research-
research focused private
centres for university.
National
Information
Centre, and
Hangzhou
E-Commerce
Research
Institute.
(Continued)
Table 2. (Continued).
Developer Initiated Land area Planning targets Industrial sectors Status of 2017 Key themes
Smart Dinglan Street June 2015 2.5 km2, central area (1) Attract 2000 Smart industry, (1) three (1) 4A tourism
Town Office, 1.3 km2, comprised of smart particularly: development equipped with
conjointly with Hangguo Smart enterprises; (1) Information plans prepared smart facilities;
Hangguo Co., Industry Park, Smart (2) 3 flagship software; by Qinghua (2) Bring smart
Huashu Co, and headquarter park and companies; (2) E-commerce; University; facilities into
East Hangzhou SME Park (3) 10 smart (3) Internet of (2) 37 enterprises neighbourhood
Software City application Things moved into its and families;
Committee systems; incubator (3) Favourable
(4) 5.5 billion YMB (3) transforming/ financial support
investment upgrading from the province,
(5) 3 million tourists 0.4 million km2 city and district
space of levels;
obsolete (4) “One enterprise,
industrial parks one preferential
(4) environment policy”
beautifying
Cloud Qingshan Lake Aug 2015 3.17 km2, including two (1) West end of Using high-tech to (1) host 107 (1) “borrow size” from
Manufacturing Tech-City core zones: Mass HFSTCC; update traditional enterprises and the Qingshan Lake
Town Committee; Innovation Zone and (2) planned to manufacturing 46 research Tech-City;
Lin’an city Intelligent generate sectors; promote institutes and (2) Relying on
Manufacturing 24 billion YMB intelligent universities; existing companies,
Upgrading Zone industry outputs, manufacturing (2) 17 research focus on smart
1.3 billion YMB and intelligent projects started health, energy,
revenue and over products (3) agglomerated environment
4 million tourists over 2100 protection, logics and
in 2017 talents intelligent
manufacturing
Silicon Fuyang Economic Early 2015 3.1 km2 among which (1) South side of (1) Optoelectronics (1) incubating over (1)enjoy same
Valley & 1 km2 is core area HFSTCC; (2) information 40 companies; preferential
Town Technology Park; (2) planned to technology; (2) attracted around policies as other
Fuyang District generate (3) industrial design 50 companies on-park
35 billion YMB (4) cultural and from local (1/3); companies;
industry outputs, creative sectors “Big Hangzhou” (2) Collaborate with
0.35 billion YMB area (1/3) and Sino-Sicilian Valley
URBAN GEOGRAPHY

revenue and over outside Association;

8 million tourists Hangzhou (1/3) (3) focus on smart
in 2017 economy
Source: Compiled by the authors.
13
14 J. T. MIAO ET AL.

intimate commercial center which includes a partly preserved but also extended rural
village. This provides for some daily needs of employees. However, it is important to
recognise that while some tech workers are able to access accommodation in the
immediate vicinity – the small scale of the town means that many, if not most employ-
ees have to go elsewhere within the district to seek housing, as well as grocery and
specialized retail and leisure facilities (CEO of a start-up company in Dream Town,
18 September 2017). Anecdotal evidence from conversations with employees confirmed
that they had to travel frequently to the city center for shopping, dining and entertain-
ing activities. Featured Towns like Dream Town thus are by no means new urban
centers or CBDs in which most work-life needs are met. Thus, for one government
official, the relationship between Dream Town and the district government was one of
child and parent (Deputy Director, Housing Bureau, Yuhang District Government,
3 May 2018).
Dream Town was planned as a specialized industrial cluster focusing on the Internet
economy. Our field visits confirmed a wide range of applications in evidence among
companies such as retail, catering, tourism, bike sharing, education, finance, health care,
and domestic services. The location near to the Taobao village of Alibaba provided the
initial attraction to many start-up companies in Dream Town. Preferential policies,
such as exempt/reduced rent and housing subsidy, also played an important role in
gathering the initial critical mass (Owner, e-commerce company, 19 September 2018).
The entry barriers in this high-tech sector are low. Yet for start-ups to grow beyond the
threshold, substantial capital is needed for physical expansion and product diversifica-
tion. The potential danger of “boom-and-bust”, as with the “dotcom” economy in the
US, is also an ever present. However, to set against these vulnerabilities, the advantage
of Dream Town according to one interviewee in comparison to the typical industrial
parks in China, is its more commercial focus, with management handed over to
Greenroot which was charged with ensuring a minimum number of visitations to
Dream Town itself (Deputy Chairman, Zhejiang University Small and Medium Sized
Enterprise Association, 7 May 2018).3 Dream Town was planned to attract over 300
venture capital companies, 10,000 graduate entrepreneurs with 2000 venture projects.
Around 100 companies registered interest when it was opened (Zhejiang Business,
2015).

4.2.2. Cloud town

The appearance and rectilinear street pattern of Cloud Town (see Figure 3) are very
different from that of Dream Town. Cloud Town is closer to the norm of many other
Featured Towns – being a conversion of the partially developed Hangzhou Zhuantang
Economic Development Zone, approved in 2002 as a traditional manufacturing base in
the south of Xihu District. It is important to recognize here the scale of local govern-
ment financing for these Featured Towns, since land and property have often been both
leased back from companies who had previously acquired use rights, and then passed
on for nominal sums to new tenants.4
Due to the tightened land use policy in China towards industrial zones, in 2005,
Zhuantang adjusted its development focus towards high-tech industries, especially
biomedicine, ICT, mechatronics, and new energy. Yet even this new designation failed
to distinguish Zhuantang among other industrial park operators in China. In 2012,
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 15

Figure 3. The industry park morphology of Cloud Town.

Source: author’s photograph.

cloud computing was identified by the Management Committee of Zhuantang as its

new selling point since Ali Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, was among its early
tenants (Sina, 2017). The existence of a flagship company, together with the marketing
effect of the annual Cloud Computing Conference hosted by Alibaba Group, helped
build the reputation of Yunqi. In 2014, Hangzhou Government announced its “No 1
Programme”, which was to upgrade itself as the national center of e-commerce, cloud
computing, and big data. Yunqi was identified as a Featured Town with the capacity to
agglomerate thousands of cloud computing enterprises, covering the complete indus-
trial chain of APP development, games, Internet finance, mobile Internet, data mining
and other applications. By 2016, there were 433 companies located in Yunqi, among
which 321 were related to cloud computing (Baidu Encyclopedia, 2017).
The “butterfly effect” of technological innovation and humanistic care was identified
as the two wings of Yunqi in its conceptual plan with growth supporting the develop-
ment of three surrounding towns of Zhijiang, Zhuantang, and Shuangpu (360 library,
2017). Pushing the live-work balance even further, Yunqi claimed to prioritize living
over work in its conceptual plan and emphasized a liveable environment and a “small
town” atmosphere. The original land coverage of Yunqi, as delineated in the Master
Plan of Hangzhou, was 3.4 km2, which was extended to 8.92 km2, and now 10 km2 in
order to accommodate more comprehensive urban functions. However, our site visits
confirmed the many similarities of Yunqi with traditional industrial parks found in
China. With much construction still underway in May 2018 and with an estimated
20 percent occupancy rate and with large parcels of land reserved for big companies,
Cloud Town lacked the buzz of Dream Town – something confirmed in an interview
with one Dream Town start-up company which had looked at premises in Cloud Town
16 J. T. MIAO ET AL.

and was aware of another start-up that had relocated back to Dream Town from Cloud
Town (CEO, Virtual Reality Start-up Company, 27 April 2018). The current tenants
were dominated by large companies, many of which internalized service functions such
as staff canteens and sports facilities. Actually, due to the lack of these functions so far,
Xihu District government encouraged companies to either self-build these facilities or
attract them into Yunqi by offering 1–2 years rent-free incentive (Xihu Government,
2015).
Based on its concept plan, Yunqi will specialize in one core sector (cloud computing)
with three extended industrial systems, including information technology, outsourcing,
and support services. The core of cloud computing will be mainly provided by Ali
Cloud. Media sources indicate that Alibaba was closely engaged in the design of the
development strategy as well as physical layout of this Featured Town. One of our
interviewees referred to Cloud Town as virtually a sub-company of the Alibaba Group
(Professor, Zhejiang University, 2 May 2018). Unlike Dream Town, Yunqi had its eye
on MNEs and headquarters of domestic companies. Among the completed office blocks
in its Industrial Zone, there are many tailor-made office complexes for single company
use, including IBM and Foxconn. It seems that Yunqi Town could become a relatively
self-contained, vertically integrated cluster, with questions remaining over the likely
knowledge spillover effects compared with Dream Town.

4.3. Unavoidable cost of China’s high-tech dream?

A general recognition of issues around housing affordability finds expression in the
control of land release by Hangzhou city government and policies for maintaining
harmonized housing prices across potentially competing districts as part of the “Big
Hangzhou” concept (Deputy Head, Housing Bureau, Yuhang District 3 May 2018).
However, despite the associated aim to improve work-life balance, Featured Towns
themselves contribute very little to housing affordability either through the market or
public means. As one interviewee highlighted:
The majority of Featured Towns are invested and maintained by private companies once
they start taking shape. To lure such private capital, especially those from developers,
governments have to give planning permissions to housing development . . . so far, no
Featured Town offers affordable housing, because it has (commercial) housing as an
integrated component. (Planner, Zhejiang Planning Bureau, 23 September 2017)

Actually, there are already signs of over-heating in the housing market of the HFSTCC
area, notably around the Featured Towns that are part of it. The rental price near Cloud
Town, for example, rose by around 20 percent immediately after this site was identified
as a provincial-level Featured Town. Therefore, while Featured Towns have been
encouraged by Beijing for cultural, tourist and social development, local governments
have absorbed them into their own strategies of revenue generation given their mono-
poly on the land markets. Far from solving issues of work–life balance, Featured Towns
may be further aggravating housing affordability issues in China.5
The occupational structure in Dream Town is dominated by technical and profes-
sional personnel followed by administrative and marketing positions with the resultant
average salary being higher than that for the city as a whole. Based on survey data
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 17

released by the Hangzhou Human Resource Bureau, the annual salary of information
technicians was 66,419RMB, ranked the sixth among the 10 high-wage jobs in 20156
(Hangzhou Net, 2015). Nonetheless, it was noticed that salary in the Internet sector
featured a dichotomous distribution in Hangzhou. While 11 percent of employees had
a monthly salary of 3–4.5 k RMB, and 27.2 percent were paid at 4.5–6 k RMB; the other
tail of 11.1 percent earned 20–30 k monthly. There was a relatively small proportion of
those earning the medium level income of 8-10k (6.4 percent) as categorised by Jiyou
Net (2017). Such salary distribution resembles that of Silicon Valley in the 1990s and
may be an early signal of socio-economic segregation in Dream Town.
The majority of land allocated for housing in Dream Town (33.7 ha) was for
compensating relocated villagers. Only 17.9 ha new construction, featuring a mix of
low, middle and high-rise apartments, are available to employees. As part of its talent-
attracting package, Dream Town released its Talent Rental Support Policy (Dream
Town, 2017): Employees with Bachelor, Master and PhD degrees would get 300, 400
and 500 RMB/month support, respectively. Based on our interviews with employees
and data from real estate agencies (Huang, 2015), the rental cost for a one-bedroom flat
near Dream Town ranged between 2000 and 4000 RMB/month. The housing price to
income ratio is around 30 if we take 66,419RMB as the average income, which is higher
than the average level of 15 to 16 for Hangzhou (Miao & Maclennan, 2017) and 10
times of the international “safe” range of 3–5. This might signal a rising liveability
challenge for the majority of young employees here. As an interviewee described
At the moment the average housing price surrounding Dream Town is around 30,000
RMB/m2, which is indeed very high. But if you compare it with the city centre of
Hangzhou or Shanghai, the price is still reasonable. The government also offers a lot of
support, so that returnees and other talents could easily get their accommodation sorted.
I also think the high housing price is very normal, it is just like what happened in Silicon
Valley. The dynamic really depends on the market and whether people can afford it or not.
If we attract more and more talents to Dream Town, the housing price will for sure grow.
(Public Relations Officer, Greenroot, 14 May 2018)

The reference to Silicon Valley is perhaps banal given its ubiquity, but it is also
intriguing as a justification for normalizing issues surrounding “overheating” as
reflected in a tighter land market, rising housing prices and growing congestion. The
reciprocal causation between economic agglomeration and rising factor cost is therefore
implicitly accepted by stakeholders of Featured Towns and does indeed raise further
interesting analytical questions regarding whether and under what conditions growth
pressures are fatal to agglomerations or merely symptoms of success.
As Das and Lam (2016) noted, the young middle-classes are the prime supporters
and consumers of this technoburban utopia, with Dream Town explicitly targeting
young entrepreneurs and graduates (Dream Town, 2018). Current data show that the
bulk of the labor force in Dream Town derive from four sources, including overseas
returnees, Alibaba affiliations, graduates from Zhejiang University and existing busi-
nessmen in Zhejiang (Zhejiang Government, 2016). One criterion for accepting com-
panies in Dream Town is that over 70 percent of their employees should have a tertiary
education and above (Dream Town, 2018).
Similar to Dream Town, Cloud Town also emphasizes attracting young, well-
educated employees, especially in the IT sector. Moreover, cloud computing currently
18 J. T. MIAO ET AL.

attracts the cream of the labor force by offering highly competitive salaries. Compared
to the 66,419RMB annual salary for general IT employees, annual income for software
development engineers in Ali Cloud averaged at 148,080 RMB in 2017, the fifth highest
in China. Different also from the dichotomous salary distribution in the general IT
sector, the bulk (around 80 percent) of cloud computing engineers in Hangzhou were
paid at less than 10k RMB per month, 11.8 percent earned 10-15K, 4 percent had 15-
20k, and around 3 percent had more than 20k monthly (Kanzhun net, 2017). The close
engagement of Alibaba Group in Cloud Town seems to suggest that a large proportion
of labor will be employees working in either Ali’s sub-branches or their subcontractors.
In terms of housing supply, there was only one residential development on site when the
authors visited Cloud Town in September 2017, as the land usage of Yunqi was defined as
“industry” which excluded real estate development. As a result, only a small proportion of
employees could benefit from the subsidized apartments. The majority had to resort to the
market. There were five real estate developments within half-an-hour travel distance from
Cloud Town. The average selling price was 25–27,000 m2 for the nearest four develop-
ments, and the most expensive one, Zhejiang Fucheng, was set at 46,000 m2 and obviously
targeted on high-income households (Souhu, 2018). The house price to income ratio could
be around 20 if we take 27,000RMB/m2 as the average housing price (for 90 m2 flat) and
120,000RMB as the average annual income. This is higher than the city’s average but
relatively affordable compared to the city center, especially Xihu and Shangcheng Districts,
where the average housing price could easily rise to 39,000RMB/m2 (Fangjia, 2018).
Nevertheless, the opening of a new subway in 2020 will link Cloud Town to the city center
in the east and Fuyang High-Speed Rail Station in the south – and while increased
accessibility will likely reduce traffic congestion, it is also likely to further spur house
price inflation in and around Cloud Town.

5. Conclusion
Notwithstanding the different paths taken towards, and features of, technoburbia in
China and the United States, their accompanying urban contradictions appear similar –
though at present they are ones of degree and are managed differently with potentially
different consequences. In China, housing prices are subject to a significant measure of
control in a way they are not in the United States, and in the case of HFSTCC, this has
kept some of the excessive housing speculation in check. The majority of our inter-
viewees did not consider rising housing prices a problem affecting the HCSTCC area –
at least not for the best paid high-tech workers. Indeed, for elite workers of which there
are many, housing price growth has provided a further source of capital gains through
the “flipping” of properties in a steadily rising market. We can only speculate that some
of these capital gains will have played into the process and scale of business start-ups
locally; further research is needed here. Other contradictions such as traffic congestion
are certainly apparent when compared to suburbanization in other Chinese cities. More
difficult to judge is how high-tech suburbanization will rub up against the natural
environment. In the case of HFSTCC, authorities are aware of the role that high
environmental amenity plays in high-tech growth, and for the time being, environ-
mental degradation is likely to be limited given relatively strict controls on wetland
areas.
 URBAN GEOGRAPHY 19

Perhaps more noteworthy is that these urban contradictions are managed entirely
differently in scope and timing between China and liberal market economies. Not
only has the whole process of suburbanization in China been subject to several
distinct planning models by now – economic development zones, new township
extensions and now Featured Towns – in which a measure of reflexivity (however
shallow) on the part of local and national governments has been apparent, but also
specific contradictions are thoroughly managed at the outset or concurrently in
a way they rarely are in the United States. This further raises an intriguing com-
parative research question – rarely clarified in economic geographical writing – of
whether institutionalization is an input or an output of high-tech growth? It is hard
to overstate the significance and pervasiveness of the role of the state in funding
many aspects of the economic transformation implicated with suburbanization in
China, including the amelioration of some urban contradictions. While we might
question whether this amounts to state intrapreneurialism specifically (Miao &
Phelps, 2018), there can be little doubt that it involves the state entrepreneurialism
found in the United States (Mazzucato, 2013) and China (Duckett, 1998). Further
interesting questions of more general significance arise here regarding whether and
in what ways new modes of urban governance will increasingly privilege young,
highly educated and mobile labour – the “creative class” (Florida, 2005) or workers
of the cognitive-cultural economy (Scott, 2008) specifically, and the extent to which
such a focus will drive new architectural, urban design and planning models.
Contextualizing the emergent Chinese technoburbia and its potential urban conse-
quences in the global south, we also notice many similarities in terms of: the conjoined
interests of private and public sectors in leveraging and capturing land value; the enchant-
ment of technoburbia in real estate development and marketing strategies designed to lure
an elite class of workers, and; the seemingly unavoidable social consequences of rising
housing costs and labour stratification. The contribution of the Chinese experience,
through the case of HCSTCC and its embedded Featured Town initiatives, is a deeper
reflection of the merits and limitations of the public attempts to plan the process of
suburbanization and control some of its unfolding challenges. Within China, our findings
contribute to ongoing discussion and policy fomentation covering the topics of metropo-
litan regionalism (“cheng shi qun”), innovative city-township development (“xinxing
chengzhen hua”) and coordinated urban-rural growth (“chengxiang xietiao fazhan”).
These are some of the strong messages sent by Premier Xi in his report on the 19th
National Congress of CPC (Xi 2017). The urban theory and planning literature can usefully
reflect on the Chinese experience in a suburban world (Keil, 2017; Phelps & Wu, 2011).

Notes
1. The Wenzhou model is one of small family-run rural village-based enterprises engaged in
production and long-distance trade. In the post-reform period, it has been at the center of
significant transformation of non-farm incomes in rural communities and partly as a result
can be said to have some similarities with the industrial districts of the Third Italy (Wei
et al., 2007).
2. Administrative townships must fulfill any of the following: (1) where the township
government is based; (2) village with less than 20,000 population, but non-agricultural
population is over 2000 in the location where the village government is based; (3) village
20 J. T. MIAO ET AL.

with more than 20,000 population, and non-agricultural population accounts for 10 per-
cent of the village total at where the village government is based; (4) ethnic minority,
priority locations, mountainous and mining areas, small ports, tourist sites and border
ports with less than 2000 population could also be considered.
3. The dissemination of the Dream Town model has not been left to chance but rather
deliberately and vigorously promoted from the outset. Moreover, the featured town model
within Yuhang district is an income generator since fees are charged for visits organized to
Featured Towns.
4. For example, the first private university established in China is located in Cloud Town.
The use rights for its comparatively small site were re-acquired by local government for
a reported 1 billion RMB and passed on to the university for a nominal 1 RMB (Staff
Member, Cloud Town Administration, 26 April 2018).
5. According to a senior officer from Zhejiang Planning Bureau, Featured Towns are not
designed as high-tech clusters but attractive platforms for working and living. Therefore, it
is important to consider the housing affordability issue. House prices in featured towns are
not the highest in Hangzhou, but they have experienced the highest growth rates and have
affected surrounding areas with implications for labor stratification and social segregation.
6. The highest salary was paid in the finance (108,136 RMB) and real estate sector (99,468
RMB) annually.

Acknowledgments
We would like to express our thanks to the editor and to referees for their timely and
constructive comments on previous drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID
Julie T. Miao http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2164-9074
Nicholas A. Phelps http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8407-9788
Tingting Lu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9332-2679

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