In China, there are more than 670 cities and about 50% of the population live in cities, the world’s most rapidly urbanized country. This trend will continue in the foreseeable future. Though urbanization brings comfortable, convenient quality of life, it also results in various problems, including traffic congestion, deteriorated air qualify, expensive housing, slums, increased crime rate, unemployment, etc. These problems must be dealt with through systematic, scientific techniques in order to improve urban environment. Therefore, urban governance is defined as applications of systematic modern management science to plan, govern, and regulate cities, in order to solve physical and non-physical problems to improve human settlements.

Based on this definition, urban governance includes two areas: cities and management. For the cities part, urban governance views cities as large complex systems, and based on complexity science in association with urban development theory derived from urban economics, it attempts to understand how cities work. Complex systems are composed of many interacting agents self-organizing themselves into some patterns, and cities are no doubt complex systems. Urban economics assumes rational behavior based on neo-classic economics, and intends to explain the physical patterns resulting from human activities taking place in the space of cities. The combination of complex systems and urban economics to explain the workings of cities will transcend the traditional distinction between socio-economic and physical aspects of cities and to view them as a whole.

For the management part, urban governance focuses simultaneously on plans, governance, and regulations as management tools to improve human settlements. In contrast to management of small systems, such as business administration, urban governance emphasizes on management of large, complex systems; therefore, its tools are distinct. Among others, plans focus on the making, arrangement, and coordination of decisions; regulations emphasize on the restriction, expansion, and distribution of rights; and governance focuses on collective choices and actions as manifested for example by government. In order for urban governance to be fully developed, all three aspects must be attended to in balance.

As to applications, the problems that urban governance deals with can be divided roughly into physical and non-physical aspects. For the physical aspect, it includes the spatial arrangement problems that are the traditional concerns of urban planning, such as land use and management, transportation, infrastructure, architecture and construction, real estate, ecologic environment, and disaster mitigation. For the non-physical or socio-economic part, it includes the issues discussed in city economics, city sociology, city political theory, city public management, and city public finance, such as crime, taxation, social welfare, institutions, government and organization, administration, policy, and budgeting.

Related Files
	An Introduction to Urban Governance