The Action Plan of Fine “Urban Governance”in Shanghai

Introduction

In 2017, President Xi pointed out during the deliberations of the Shanghai delegation that "a mega-city like Shanghai should be managed as finely as embroidery". 2018 saw the full launch of the first round of the "three-year action plan" to improve urban management refinement, which is a prerequisite for high-level development, high-quality life and high-performance governance.  Through more than three years of effort, Shanghai's urban management level has been further improved.

Due to the wide range of urban management and the complexity of the issues involved, in the process of promoting the first round of the "Three-Year Action Plan", Shanghai's urban management department has become increasingly aware that a large number of issues in the field of urban management are interrelated and highly comprehensive, complex and systematic. Localized measures confined to one department cannot really solve the problem. Shanghai urgently needs to achieve an innovative breakthrough in the system. This "innovative thinking" can be summarized as three "focus", namely, focus on the "people's aspirations", focus on "four objectives", and focus on " deep work ".

1.focus on "people's aspirations"

The work of urban management refinement is not to replace the work of urban management departments themselves, but to focus on comprehensive work in the field of urban management due to cross-department, cross-level and cross-region, such as green communities, comprehensive renovation of old housing, installation of elevators in existing multi-story apartments, "one network management", etc., as well as those issues that are often neglected because of trivial and small, such as indiscriminate parking, pocket parks, traffic barriers, street tree covers, electric bicycle charging, under-bridge space improvement, stray pet management, and accessibility of pedestrian bridges, etc.

（fig1. installation of elevators in existing multi-story apartments）

Shanghai takes the concept of "people's city" as the yardstick, and pays attention to the welfare and satisfaction of citizens in urban governance. Among the 7 key tasks of urban management refinement, 5 of them are special actions for people's welfare, including "public space quality upgrading", "residential district quality promotion", "rural quality promotion", "resilient city construction", "comprehensive environmental improvement", "resilient city construction" and so on.

2. Focus on four objectives

Shanghai regards urban management as one of the important functional systems to serve the healthy operation and development of the city, and has proposed four construction goals and tasks.

The first is a set of fine management "overall structure" to coordinate the administrative power of each level and each block, which is the construction of the basic "skeleton" of urban management refinement. Without this "skeleton" built by the government city management departments at all levels, the basic functions of the new era of socialist people's city will not be guaranteed, and the city will fall into disorder and chaos.

The second is a number of refined management "governance mode": management requires both a framework for action, but also the specific implementation. The government's grassroots organizations and various types of social self-governance organizations are the concrete operators of the "last mile" of urban management. The formation of the pattern of common construction, common governance and sharing is the fundamental path for the implementation of urban management refinement.

The third is a "comprehensive platform" for refined management: based on the gridded management, this platform will continue to realize the simultaneous construction and upgrading of software （application scenarios） and hardware （sensing ends）， and actively promote the mutual promotion and integration between online technical means and offline management processes. It is like the "brain" and "neural network" of the city, gaining insight into various problems in city operation and driving the city to solve them.

The fourth is a set of refined management "health standards": this set of standards contains the rule of law, standards and norms, urban physical examination, assessment mechanisms and other content. The city will dynamically assess whether the city is running healthily and smoothly, whether the city management is scientific and efficient, and whether all aspects are coordinated and orderly, so as to provide reference for future improvement.

（fig2. City streets in Shanghai）

3.focus on "deep work"

Shanghai strives to practice the attitude of "deep plowing" in the field of urban management. For example, Shanghai will not only continue to expand the number and scope of "beautiful neighborhoods", but also consolidate and deepen the results of the first round of 'beautiful neighborhoods' construction, and extend to the back streets and back alleys.

Shanghai also proposed to create a " demonstration area of fine management in the people's city ", emphasizing the organic combination of citizen self-governance and social governance mechanism construction in the demonstration area, continue to explore the objective development of urban management laws, summarize experience and practices, to form a long-term management mechanism and standards that can be replicated.

（fig3. riverside park in Shanghai）

The operation, development and evolution of cities have their own laws. If the laws are not followed, the city will not run smoothly and the life of citizens will be affected. In order to obtain scientific management methods and crack the "code" of urban management, city managers have to carry out long-term and repeated practical exploration with urban space as the carrier. The "deep work" is not only the attitude of the government management to serve the people, but also a necessary process and a necessary attitude to achieve scientific management of the city.

Source: <https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/KUjVOkPalGHjan-5jjpoKw>

Translated by Hou Ying