From “Division” to “Integration”: Evolution and Reform of China’s Spatial Planning System

Spatial planning is a public policy arrangement for land use allocation and spatial structure regulation. As a method used by the public sector to influence the spatial distribution of future activities, spatial planning has become an important method and basis for the Chinese government to perform its duties. In the process of its long-term development, China has formed a unique spatial planning system. Based on the perspective of evolution and comparison, this paper systematically reviews the evolution of China’s spatial planning system from “multi-plan division” to “multi-plan integration” under the inheritance of departments. The findings are as follows. ① China’s spatial planning has long presented a pattern of separate management by multiple departments, such as development and reform, construction, land, and environmental protection. The emergence and development of various types of planning is a necessary spatial governance tool for specific national conditions and major issues of land space development and protection in China. ② In the evolution process of more than half a century, the planning of various departments has gradually established, inherited, and continuously changed their own planning systems and control content; thus, China’s spatial planning has undergone a process of “planning absence–planning division–planning integration”. ③ The brand-new territorial spatial plan inherits the “three types” of control space, including land utilization master planning, urban and rural master planning, and ecological environment planning, and forms a set of binding index systems, which have become the decision-making basis for the current territorial space resource allocation. ④ In the future, China’s spatial planning system should be further optimized and improved in aspects such as the coordination mechanism of “soft” and “hard” spatial planning, the spatial resource allocation system that places equal emphasis on legality and efficiency, and the spatial layout system from “major function-oriented zoning” to “space use zoning”. Insight into the evolution of China’s spatial planning system can provide historical and logical support for the improvement of China’s spatial governance thinking and the continuous improvement of the efficiency of land space resource allocation in the future and provide a certain reference value for the comparative study of the planning systems of different countries in the world.