Think Locally, Act Locally: A Critique of China’s Specialty Town Program in Practice

This paper provides a critique of the “specialty towns” program, a key constituent of China’s current new-style urbanization campaign. It problematizes the contradictory accounts of the program, namely, emphasizing “place-based” strengths while simultaneously standardizing forms, functions, and goals with a strong “place-neutral” approach. We argue that three key building blocks are critical for understanding specialty towns: place dependence, embeddedness, and locational advantage. Through multiple-case studies in Zhejiang, evidence has shown that there is a mismatch between national policies and local practices in specialty town development. The latter has its own place-specific logic of development shaped by history, geography, institutions, and agency. In particular, existing small-scale growth settings (e.g., industrial parks, specialized markets) and characteristics of local agency are the main factors affecting local practices. This paper argues that without considering the specificities of places in a broader socioeconomic context, the program may fail to work as effectively as expected in its local implementation.