Redevelopment of development zones: The smart growth of cities in China

Development zones are the important carriers of China’s promoting industrialization and attracting international investment in the past 30 years and act as the primary means of city expansion. In this article, we analyse the low efficiency of land use problem existing in China’s current development zones. Comparing with the general old city update phenomenon, we make a detailed illustration on the feasibility and comparative advantage of redevelopment of development zones. On this basis, combining with the investigation practice, we propose the basic redevelopment models of development zones and analyse the typical redevelopment cases of development zones in Xi’an, Shanghai, Changzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing.