Ever since China opened up to the world in 1980's, the Shanghai Municipal Government, led by the Communist Party of China and the State Council, makes great effort to build the city into an international economic, financial, trade and shipping center. With the cooperation and hardwork of Shanghai people, the city is progressing to its goal as a global metropolitan. The new team of leaders of the Shanghai government took office in February 2003. "The power of the government is entrusted by the people; the interest of people is above all," as Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng promise in his inaugural. Guided by the Shanghai Party Committee, the city's new leadership vows to strictly perform its official duties; to make significant progress in self-improvement, and to intensify the shift of its role from administrative to public service. The Shanghai government will build itself into a service government that would share with the people all their happiness and troubles; a solid responsible government that is efficient, honest and diligent; a law-abiding government that respects legal system and rules strictly and impartially.

Shanghai establishes its image as "Transparent Government" by letting municipal planning known to the public

06/24/2004

Municipal planning should be made public and transparent
Over the time, "planning" has been a vague concept in the minds of the general public: even after one has a good look at the big models in the City Planning Exhibition Hall, he still will not be clear about the future developments of his residence place and its surroundings. When ordinary people go to inquire the community authorities about the details of planning, the answer is usually "no comments", because "planning" is always equivalent to "secret".
At present, Shanghai tries to establish its image as "transparent government", so that planning goes to transparency from mystery and obscurity. Shanghai municipal government and Shanghai Planning Bureau are rigorously coordinating the planning system, which has been brought into the amended Shanghai City Planning Regulations, coming into effect on October 1st last year. Just on the same day, Shanghai City Planning and Administration Technology Regulation (Management on Land Using for Construction), signed and issued by Mayor Han Zheng, also came into effect. These regulations and documents can be found in both the website of Shanghai municipal government(www.shanghai.gov.cn) and that of Shanghai Planning Bureau(www.shghj.gov.cn). Regulation on Publicizing Shanghai Municipal Governmental Information, which came into effect on May 1st this year, stipulates that except the real national classified information, the public information that the government keeps, including city planning, should be made public to all citizens.
With public and transparent regulations and information channels, the general public can have a better understanding of various city plans. In addition, their implementation can be appropriately supervised because the public is noticing their developments.
Standard procedures should be gone through to carry out planning
Any way, the citizens who have consulted relevant departments many times on the matter of planning are not in the majority. However, many citizens must have seen such social phenomena- A building, planned to have 25 floors, turns out to have 28 floors after construction, taking the shape of "butterfly" rather than the planned "diamond"; the newly-built public greenbelt quickly becomes a "basin" surrounded by top-grade buildings; the public landscape, with the function of serving the whole city, has been surrounded by many buildings before the comprehensive planning of it has come out, for instance, some reaches of Suzhou River have already become "canyons"...
The planning can always be distorted more or less in reality. Therefore, some citizens have such comments on city planning-"Planning is just planning."
The official of Shanghai City Planning Bureau points out that if planning work can enjoy public and transparent law guarantee, the procedures of implementation should also be standardized. Shanghai City Planning Bureau has placed great efforts in this respect, paying much attention to preparatory examination and approval of planning and its following supervision and loosing grip on the examination and approval of some specific projects.
Shanghai City Planning Bureau has launched two eye-catching moves-
The lifetime responsibility system of the people in charge of planning project. The person who finally examines and approves a project must should bear responsibility, and even legal responsibility no matter where he goes afterwards. The restriction of power requires the person who examines and approves a project to be cautious with the use of his power. From now on, all completed projects must go through the "post-evaluation" of the planning. If the check of planning is not up to the standard, responsibilities of various links should be investigated according to law.
Intensifying the management and punishment of planning implementation. First, vigorous efforts should be made to routine patrol and kind warning so as to nip the practice against regulations in the bud. Secondly, more attention will be paid to the punishment. Buildings that are against planning should be demolished and confiscated. For those that have already come into the market, transgressors should be fined without any compromise and the fine will be calculated according to the market price of the building.
Increasing implementation efficiency by means of technology
The official said for that citizen who has consulted them for 93 times, they now can give a clear explanation: those who want to evaluate the amount of sunshine getting into the house will not wait for a long time and rely heavily on the weather. The Planning Bureau will soon launch a set of software. If one enters such parameters as distance, angle, fall between buildings, as well as analytic data of Shanghai annual sunshine, into the software, he will obtain scientific and authoritative sunshine evaluation in a short time.
At present, the examination and approval of various planning declarations should go through standardized procedures. Every project will have a special number with the similar function to ID card. The examination and approval of planning will get an official written reply within 50 working days and the examination and approval of items will be completed within 20 working days. As long as you enter the special number on Shanghai planning website, you can see the latest situation of handling the declaration item. The items that have gone through examination and approval will continuously shown on Shanghai planning website so that it is convenient for various people to consult.
On the basis of present-day overall planning exhibition, the City Planning Exhibition Hall, located on the People Avenue, will gradually exhibit district planning, industry planning, professional planning and key item planning to enable citizens to have a better understanding of city planning, with the purpose of facilitating citizens to supervise the implementation of planning.
The Shanghai government 2006