Maturing governance over time: Groping for economic upgrading in Guangzhou’s Zhongda cloth market

Abstract

Guangzhou has been focusing and promoting economic transition processes and strategies in the past decade to regain and consolidate its economic, political, and cultural power within the Pearl River Delta. This has taken place by the development and redevelopment of defined core areas, such as the Zhujiang New Town as Guangzhou’s new CBD, Guangzhou University Town, or Guangzhou Science City as flagship project for establishing knowledge-intensive high-tech industries. At the same time and despite an otherwise strongly government-led and top-down followed urban planning system, one can observe very dynamic economic upgrading processes in areas not in the city or district governments’ focus. Here, planning power seems to be overridden and replaced by micro-stakeholder organizations such as urbanized villagers or private investors. Taking a case study from Guangzhou, the chapter investigates how areas of economic change are developed differently, looking at aspects of actor involvement, their objectives, and relations in these processes showing that indicators for a maturing megacity can also be found there.