**1. Introduction**

#### *1.1. Planning for the Rapid Growth of Beijing*

Beijing has experienced a tremendous urban growth in the past century, growing from 4.2 million inhabitants in 1949 to 21.7 million inhabitants in 2015. In parallel with that, the built-up area of the city expanded and increased its size by more than 12 times in that period, from 109 to 1401 km<sup>2</sup> [1]. Regulating urban development of the capital was always a major focus of planning and spatial policies during all these years. One of the key planning ideas of the past was the development of a green belt around the city, now referred to as the 'first green belt', as a second one, further out from the centre, also came up later.

The design and development of the first green belt in Beijing covered a long period since 1949. Six successive master plans were formulated for Beijing from 1949 to 2004, and from the 1958 master plan, the green belt took a place in the comprehensive plan. The green belt was influenced by various policies and plans, and its size fluctuated up and down following the policy changes.

Previous studies worked on this case from various aspects. Ouyang et al. [2] evaluated its ecological function and species composition. Yang and Jinxing [3] analysed the administrative framework as well as temporal spatial changes. Zhao [4] assesses the performance of urban containment strategies in Beijing over between 1990 and 2009. Han [5] discussed the possibility to convert the green belt into greenways. Ma and Jin [6] analysed the possible scenarios under alternative levels of green belt interventions. Han and Long [7] listed the disadvantages of the first green belt policies and discussed the impacts. However, a comprehensive investigation of the planning history has not been written yet, despite that the case provides the possibility to deep insides into the urban development of the Chinese capital and its accompanying planning ideas and practices through the decades.

**Citation:** Sun, L.; Fertner, C.; Jørgensen, G. Beijing's First Green Belt—A 50-Year Long Chinese Planning Story. *Land* **2021**, *10*, 969. https://doi.org/10.3390/ land10090969

Academic Editors: Przemysław Sleszy ´ ´ nski, Maciej J. Nowak and Giancarlo Cotella

Received: 2 July 2021 Accepted: 11 September 2021 Published: 15 September 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

#### *1.2. The Green Belt Concept and the Chinese Context*

The idea of a green belt surrounding the city goes back to the nineteenth century and planning ideas in British and other European cities [8]. Today it is a widely used planning instrument. A green belt is a physical area of open space, e.g., farmland, forest, or other greenspace, that surrounds a city or metropolitan area and connects with the wider urban green infrastructure. The content in a green belt can be different, but essential characteristics of green belts, i.e., the openness and permanence, as, for example, stated by the UK planning department [9], can be found in most cases. Elson [10] described a green belt as a special policy defining an area within which only a highly restrictive schedule of changes constituting development under the planning acts will normally be permitted. Therefore, it is to be a permanent barrier to urban expansion and thus recognized as the most restrictive form of urban containment policy [11].

A globally famous example is London, with a green belt firstly put in place in the interwar period, soon to be positioned as an instrument to nature close to the city and limit urban sprawl [12]. Green belts since then occupied a central position in England's planning system. The first green belt in London drew worldwide attention because of its success in containing urban growth in existing and planned communities, preserving agricultural land, and protecting the environment [13]. Since then, green belts were applied in many other cities in different countries [14]. In Tokyo, green belts were used to create open space for air defence [15], in Moscow to provide clean air and recreation for the city core [16].

The ambitions were though not always met and green belts have also been criticised for a number of negative effects, e.g., urban land shortages, increased housing prices, decreased green belt land prices, increased urban congestion, or leapfrog development [8,11,13]. Several scholars analysed the role of different factors for the success of green belts. Ali [13] proposed four framing factors: political will, public support, plans, and legislation. Amati and Yokohari [17] highlighted the importance of flexibility with regulations and support from landowners. Bengston and Youn [11] stated the impact of social and economic contexts, cost and benefit, and policy reform.

As we will see later, similar factors played a decisive role for Beijing's first green belt. Today, some kind of green belt is employed in many Chinese cities, often as a measure to contain urban growth and improve the environment [18,19]. This wide coverage has a young history though, as, for example, urbanization was not recognized as an issue in China until the openness and economic reform in the late 1970s [20]. However, urbanization happened rapidly, far beyond calculation and soon out of control. Between 1978 and 2015, China's urbanization rate increased from 18% to 56% [21] and is expected to continue [22]. The unprecedented scale of urbanization has caused social and economic challenges, for examples, loss of agricultural land threatening the food security, and housing shortage for immigrant workers [23,24], but was also linked to environmental and health problems. Beijing struggled with sandstorms and smog pollution in recent decades [25,26], but it is not a unique case: In 2012, less than 1% of the 500 largest cities in China met the air quality standards recommended by WHO [27].

Urbanisation in Chinese cities was often accompanied by a fairly high population density, especially in some fringe villages [18], which resulted in a vulnerable urban fringe zone under strong pressure since the 1980s. Most of the population increase happened in the closest suburban areas [28]. Between 1982 and 1990, population growth in Beijing was 3% in the urban centre, 40% in the near suburbs and 13% in the far suburbs [29,30].

The disordered urban growth and consequent challenges called for corresponding approaches, and green belts were one of the most popular ways to tackle urban sprawl and contain urban growth in the country's cities [31]. Green belts were heavily introduced in the mid-1990s, when the economic development boosted urbanisation, including the biggest cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen [32,33]. Many cities developed their tailored schemes including green belt(s) as a part of the city's master plan. Guangzhou designed a system of green corridors and nodes [19] and Jinan planned an integrated green network system consisting of green belts and green wedges [34]. Moreover, Beijing's green belt go<sup>t</sup> renewed attention in the 1990s. Its roots can though be traced back to the 1940s.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**

In this paper, we analyse the making of the first green belt, from the first ideas and plans in the 1950s until it was officially declared as finished in 2004. How did the green belt idea evolve over time, how was it put into practice, and how was it influenced by contemporary political and socio-economic agendas?

To answer these questions and establish the construct validity and reliability of the case study, we collected multiple sources of evidence, including document study, direct observations, and interviews. Through desk-based and fieldwork studies, we have collected multiple sources of evidence to support the analysis, as shown in the Figure 1 below.

**Figure 1.** Research methods and process.

First, we give an in-depth account of the important planning documents and events related to the green belt since the proclamation of the P.R. China in 1949. The most important documents include the several City Master Plans of Beijing that we will discuss in the next section, as well as the green belt related official documents listed in Table 1 below. Many materials were acquired from official archives and planning institutions, including national and local policies, regulations and plans.

We have also visited the case areas multiple times which gave us the opportunity for direct observations of the current status of the green belt. Besides site visits, the fieldwork included semi-structured interviews with 4 experts: 2 with former senior officials from the municipal governmen<sup>t</sup> and the City's Planning Institute and 2 with active planners in the City's Planning Institute. The interviews were especially helpful to ge<sup>t</sup> hold of unpublished documents and insights into discussions and debates at the time. We are aware that our source material mainly refers to official documents and planners' perspectives which is caused by the historical and contextual nature of the case. We will critically discuss that at the end of the paper. Moreover, before going deeper into the case we will provide a short review of the general idea of a green belt, which we later use to discuss the case's specificities.

We have used a mixed methods approach for data collection and analysis which permits a synergistic utilisation of data from various sources. The document study provided a good collection of quantitative data which are supplemented by qualitative data from site observations and interviews. We have compared and analysed findings with quantitative and qualitative data sources which provided validation for each other. The consolidated results are presented in the next section.


**Table 1.** Relevant official documents beyond the Master Plans.
