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The purpose of this paper we present a case study where the Swedish planning support system Citylab is applied to a Chinese case in Changzhou's Tianning District.

China's planning system is a vertical system based on policy development on the national level, policies which are to be implemented on local level. There is a gap between the ambitious central policies and the implementations on local levels. China is now exporting its planning model to other developing countries which makes it urgent to show examples of other strategies including more horizontal planning involving the public. The planning system in Sweden is based on a much more horizontal process. Therefore, the authors try to learn from Sweden's vertical planning system in the urban development environment of China.

A key message for policy makers in China is that systems like Citylab can play an important role in developing practical and scalable examples of more sustainable city districts. The paper concludes that a barrier for local sustainability planning in China is still lack of effective communication between local actors including the public.

The authors exemplified Changzhou Tianning District's practical exploration, thus proving the adapted Citylab method's practical operability. Based on the common problems faced by eco-city development in developing countries, the method framework of Citylab is applicable to other developing countries, with strong room for deduction and development.

This paper aims to analyse Chinese policy instruments for climate change mitigation.

First, the paper reviews Chinese energy consumption per unit of GDP (EC/GDP) in order to determine the overall effects of the combined policy instruments. Second, the different policy instruments are compared in terms of their effects. Third, the actual trends of EC/GDP in two provinces and the instruments adopted by them are analysed on the provincial level.

The decline in EC/GDP can indirectly reflect the Chinese contribution to mitigation of CO₂ emissions since fossil fuels dominate Chinese energy consumption. The national EC/GDP values have shown a declining trend from 2005 to date, indicating that the policy instruments are very important to mitigate climate change as regards reducing EC/GDP. The technological improvement regulations have made the greatest contribution to date to reduce EC/GDP values. The experiences from the Beijing and Shandong province indicate that their final targets in 2010 will be most likely achieved because the different provinces are not only following the national policy instruments but have also developed quite a few new instruments to assist in reaching the these reductions.

There are three limitations regarding Chinese policy instruments analysis. First, the paper does not go far to determine the other factors which can affect EC/GDP apart from policy instruments. Second, some data were lacking and there may be inaccuracies in the existing data that could affect the analysis results. Third, EC/GDP cannot reflect the Chinese contribution to mitigation of CO₂ emissions if the composition of Chinese energy consumption changes significantly.

The paper addresses the importance of various policy instruments in reducing EC/GDP. The results can be referenced by Chinese policy makers on both the national and provincial level.

With the development of social economy, the urbanization of the world has presented a new development trend. The green, ecological, and economic city has gradually attracted people's attention. How to plan new cities and towns to coordinate economic development with nature has been the focus of domestic and foreign scholars. Based on this premise, this article elaborates the domestic and foreign research status of ecological city and puts forward a new type of green ecological civilization from the perspective of evolution of civilization. From the perspective of green ecological economy, the evolution of China's urban planning is studied in terms of the urban and rural areas, nature, pollution, industry, culture, and other aspects. To accumulate experience, green ecological planning in New York is also analyzed at multiple levels, such as urban expansion, energy, and urban water use. According to the development of our country in the past 30 years, the development strategy of urbanization suitable to China's national conditions is introduced on the basis of ecological economy. From the perspective of green ecological planning and economy, practice has proved that new urban planning is able to promote the establishment of a resource-saving society, to enhance the coordinated development of the population, resources, environment, and economy, and to comprehensively improve people's quality of life.