Bridging the top-down and bottom-up approaches to smart urbanization? A reflection on Beijing’s Shuangjing International Sustainable Development Community Pilot

ABSTRACT The relation between planning and smart city development is interwoven. On the one hand, planning is being digitalized and ‘smartificated’, but threatened by the growing dominance of IT corporations in urban development. On the other hand, bottom-up smart initiatives at the neighbourhood level are emerging to challenge top-down control, but the relation between top-down and bottom-up approaches is conflicting and often disconnected. In the Chinese context, a newly established neighbourhood planning mechanism – community duty planners (CDPs) – appears to open up opportunities for bridging bottom-up and top-down approaches to smart city development. In Beijing, the CDPs are institutionalized under Beijing’s Refined Urban Management (RUM) framework which aims to improve the city’s built environment and quality of living. The CDPs play the role of intermediary actors connecting local government with the communities. The article is a reflection on the Shuangjing International Sustainable Development Community Pilot and the CDPs of Shuangjing Neighbourhood. It describes and reflects on how planning institutions can influence smart city development at the neighbourhood level and how bottom-up initiatives can be connected to long-term top-down plans. Highlights An institutional planning arrangement placing planners as intermediary actors at the neighbourhood level can help to resolve the conflicts between short-term and long-term objectives in smart city development. Besides planners, an intermediary role can be fulfilled by groups or individuals who have mastery of IT and a good grasp of urban knowledge. Future community planning education is suggested to incorporate more IT-related components. An open system is necessary for connecting top-down and bottom-up initiatives.