A worker tests the facade of an elevator refitted to an old residential community in Xiangyang, Hubei Province, on July 25, a move to improve people’s lives. Photo: IC PHOTO

On July 14–15, the Central Urban Work Conference was held in Beijing, at which Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, delivered an important speech outlining the overall requirements, key principles, and priority tasks for urban work at present and for the foreseeable future. Scholars agreed that Xi’s important speech provided fundamental guidance for accelerating the construction of “modern cities of people” in the new era, thereby forging a new path for urban modernization with Chinese characteristics.

Historic achievements

Over the past few decades, China has undergone the world’s largest and fastest urbanization. Yang Xuedong, a tenured professor from the School of Social Sciences at Tsinghua University, noted that since reform and opening up, China’s rapid development has resulted in the largest-scale urbanization in human history, ushering in an era of “urban China.” More importantly, China’s urbanization is now shifting its focus—from speed to high-quality development and advanced governance.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China has steadily advanced urban renewal, adopting a systems thinking approach to urban development and establishing a new symbiotic model of green, safe, and resilient urban growth enabled by digital and intelligent transformation. Drawing on specific cases such as Beijing’s “Dual-Carbon Smart Platform” launched in Tongzhou District, Hangzhou’s “Resilient Transport Corridor,” Shenzhen’s “Low-Carbon Resilient New City” initiative, and the “Digital Governance for Ecological Islands” project in Chongming Island of Shanghai, Jiang Xiaoping, director of the Institute of Urban Governance at Sichuan University, emphasized that through multidimensional approaches—including institutional innovation, technological empowerment, spatial restructuring, and collaborative governance—China has created a path of digital- and intelligence-driven green urban development, progressively achieving “production-living-ecology” synergy. In parallel, efforts to bolster urban safety and resilience through digital and intelligent means have fostered a holistic wisdom that balances development, security, and resilience, establishing a globally leading “Chinese paradigm” of green, safe, and resilient urban symbiosis.

Policy deepening and upgrading

In December 2015, the CPC Central Committee held its first central urban work conference since reform and opening up. Ten years on, the CPC Central Committee once again convened this top-level conference for urban work. Lu Shaoming, director of the Institute of Urban Spatial Culture and Science at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, remarked that this year’s conference reaffirmed the “people’s city” philosophy introduced in 2015, while also outlining a new path for urban modernization with Chinese characteristics. It aims to transform urban development models, further highlighting the pivotal role of cities in the new dual-circulation development paradigm under the broader goal of Chinese modernization.

This year’s conference stressed fostering new quality productive forces to support high-quality economic growth, particularly through urban renewal and urban-rural integration to bridge the urban-rural divide and advance common prosperity. These priorities signal a deepening and upgrading of urban development policies, Lu explained.

For the first time, the conference proposed the goal of “building modern cities of the people that are innovative, desirable to live in, beautiful, resilient, culturally advanced, and smart” from a holistic and strategic perspective. Cai Jinsong, dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (School of Public Administration) at Beihang University, stated that this set of overarching goals reflects a major innovation in China’s urban development philosophy for the new era, marking the opening of a new chapter in further deepening reforms comprehensively and advancing Chinese modernization through urban work.

Shifting from scale to quality

The conference highlighted that “China’s urbanization is shifting from rapid growth to stable development, and urban development is shifting from a stage of large-scale expansion to one focused on improving the quality and efficiency of existing urban areas.”

Ni Pengfei, a research fellow from the National Academy of Economic Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the conference sent a crucial signal: a major reassessment of China’s urban development and a significant shift in urban strategy. It provided guiding principles and implementation pathways to manage this transition, which will help address current urban challenges such as environmental pollution, traffic congestion, and housing shortages—often referred to as “urban diseases.”

The conference requires five key shifts in urban development: shifting development philosophy to “place more emphasis on the people’s wellbeing,” shifting development models to “prioritize intensive and efficient growth,” shifting growth drivers to “highlight distinctive features,” shifting the focus of urban work to “increase input in governance,” and shifting work methods to “strengthen overall coordination.”

He Yanling, a professor at Renmin University of China, underscored that these “five shifts” represent a transition from a growth-oriented paradigm to one centered on governance, fundamentally restructuring spatial production logic. These are not isolated changes, she explained, but transformations anchored in “human-centric values,” which will drive the reconfiguration of spatial logic, growth mechanisms, and governance models through evolving core principles. They not only address the sustainable development of cities today but also define the basic form of future urban civilization.

Sun Meijuan, Zhang Yixin, Ban Xiaoyue, Chen Yajing, and Liu Yue contributed to this story.