Community planners pioneering local governance

On a recent weekend, teachers and students from the School of Architecture of Tsinghua University joined community planners at a small neighborhood garden in Beijing's Qinghe Street, carrying hand-drawn maps and saplings to co-create green space. Lively discussions filled the air, as locals enthusiastically proposed ideas while children offered sweet watermelons, a symbol of neighborly harmony in northern Chinese communities.

The heartwarming scene reflected the unique charm of China's community planner system. From hutong to longtang, special alleyways in Beijing and Shanghai respectively, and from mountainous neighborhoods in Chongqing to rural villages in Chengdu, Sichuan province, a new model of urban governance, blending institutional strength with warmth, is reshaping the development of Chinese cities today.

Traditional urban planning often faced the tricky challenge of "exquisite blueprints disconnected from local conditions". Grand civic projects backed by heavy government investments sometimes failed to meet the nuanced needs of diverse communities. But as urban renewal efforts have progressed across the country, big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Chengdu have pioneered an innovative solution: the community planner system.