Institutional Hybridity of the Chinese High-Speed Railway Oriented Development: Exemplified By Three Chinese Cases -- CANCELLED

The rapidly extending High-Speed Railway (HSR) network and new stations are expected to be the catalysts for a new round of leapfrog spatial expansion and regional restructure in China. Unlike the redeveloped (central) stations in European and Japanese cities, most of the Chinese HSR stations are peripherally located on the collage of urban-rural land. They are speculated with airport-style spatial arrangement and ambitious urban plans. It triggers the power game between the transport actors, governmental actors, local civic actors, and developers. Given the hybridity of institutional settings, the current HSR oriented development are heading towards different directions. The actual implementation of the blueprint is profoundly dependent on the games between various actors with differentiated preferences and orientations.

Therefore, this paper introduces the perspective of Actor-centred Institutionalism, aiming to illustrate the action arenas of the speculated HSR new towns on urban periphery. It addresses the research question: How do the institutional hybridity under the Chinese Urban Entrepreneurialism impact the decision-making of location choice and implementation process of HSR oriented development? It gives comparative insights into three Chinese cases, Hongqiao CBD around Shanghai Hongqiao Integrated Transportation Hub, South City Extension around Nanjing South Railway Station, and Yangchun-lake Sub-city-centre around Wuhan Railway Station. Each case represents one specific type of actor arena, which is illustrated by analytic unit of four collective action problems: location choice, infrastructural integration, spatial integration, and social coherence. The paper is not to conclude with the ideal typology, but to gain implications to avoid segregations in such a rapid urbanization trajectory of Chinese cities.