Below is a list of the candidate topics that can be used for the team project and / or the literature synthesis.
- The quiet disappearance of “green GDP” in China
- Urban environment challenges and responses
- Are Chinese governments more sincere about energy policy than environmental policy?
- Clean energy and energy innovation in China
- Public attitude toward sustainable development: History, evolution and prospects
- China’s 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th five-year plans: Impacts on urban development and urban mobility
- Car ownership, motorization and urban policy responses
- Promoting of electric vehicles: National and municipal policies
- Measuring urban equity: Mobility needs of the urban poor and migrant workers
- High-speed rail and urban-regional development
- Openness of Chinese cities: Significance, measurement, variation and trend
- Law, rule of law and respect of law: Cases in urban development and planning
- Property rights and its connections in urban arena: Urban villages, migrant workers, semi-public spaces, etc.
- Public education: Primary and second schools, gaokao, locals vs. migrants
- Aging society: Who’s responsible for caring for the elderly? Can we regulate “love?”
- National urban policies and their interaction with local municipalities
- Comparative studies between Chinese cities and OECD or other developing countries: To what degree are Chinese urban issues unique?
- Public healthcare reforms: Variations among cities in their experiments
- An update on “Urban Planning in China: Continuity and Change”—what has happened since Abramson’s 2006 paper?
- Building institutions for sustainable urban development
