Facilitating Conditions for Connective Capacity in a Top-down Land Planning Governance System

Land planning governance is considered as a deliberate attempt to solve the complex nature of land planning. Connective capacity as the capacities of domains and institutions to combine various values, cross boundaries and establish linkage, is found as one of the main aspects of the land planning governance. However, existing researches have mainly focused on the government actors, layers, sectors and perceptions of connective capacities in the bottom-up system. Far less attention has been paid to the facilitating conditions for connective capacity in a top-down system. And most of the early connective capacity studies relate to water problems, empirical research on the contributing factors for connective capacity building to solve spatial institutional fragmentation issues is rather scarce. Therefore, this study aims to explore the facilitating conditions for connective capacity in a top-down land planning governance system. Main research questions are addressed: which conditions (such as trust building and network forms) stimulate the work and cooperation of various domains in a top-down land planning governance system and what are the performances for institutions’ action in land planning governance? In this article, the top-down land planning governance is studied in the case of Multiple Planning Integration (MPI), a program by the Chinese government to coordinate and unify spatial planning system in the country. This program was selected as a case study since it exemplifies the complexity of connections between different domains such as agriculture, forest, water and housing in land planning. The mixed approach will be used as a methodology for this study. In order to compare the integrated land governance performance and investigate the facilitating conditions, quantitative land use data analysis and semi-structure interviews will be conducted among public officials who are involved in MPI. The article concludes with insights from the case study of comparing land governance performance in three cities in China before and after MPI. Further conclusions will be dawn related to the relationship between trust, network forms (formal networks, informal networks and mixed networks), connective capacity and land planning governance performance, which may be found in a top-down system.