BSP (UCL) and School of Government (PKU) Global Urban Seminar Series

The Bartlett School of Planning (UCL) and the School of Government (PKU) Global Urban Seminar Series aims to explore some of the key pressing challenges affecting cities, globally, in the face on accelerated changes, being developed with the goal of broadening current understandings, stimulate new ideas and debates and develop new areas for knowledge sharing.

Cities are being reshaped by intersecting social, economic and environmental pressures, which expose the limits of conventional, top-down models of planning and policy. Healthy and innovative cities emerge where governance recognises structural inequalities, values lived experience as a source of expertise, and opens decision making to negotiation, conflict and collaboration. Governing urban transformation differently means reconfiguring how decisions are made, whose interests are centred, and which forms of knowledge count. It involves new collaborative platforms and co-produced practices that connect questions of wellbeing, innovation and social justice. .

THIS IS AN ONLINE EVENT

Timing: 9am - 11am UK , 5pm - 7pm China

Speaker Information

Professor Helen Pineo: Research Associate Professor at the Department of Urban Design and Planning, University of Washington.

Title: Evolving Healthy Urbanism: The Transformative Potential of Co-Production

Complex social and environmental challenges are driving scholarship and policy debates on urban transformation for health. With public health origins, this discourse too often focuses on evidence-based policy and city-led programmes, diminishing the possibility for transformative change that is incremental and driven through co-production. Dominance of the biomedical model underpins this challenge, with its emphasis on individual over structural determinants of health. Drawing on new research from the ‘Change Stories’ project and her 2022 book, Healthy Urbanism, Dr Helen Pineo will explore how cities can be sites of shared responsibility for health through acts of solidarity and collective action. She will build on her multi-scalar framework for healthy urban development, deepening its attention to recognitional and structural dimensions of justice.

Dr Pineo will highlight examples from cities such as Bogotá, Colombia and Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where participatory governance bodies, public institutions and social movements are collaboratively reimagining what it means to create healthy cities in the context of food sovereignty and women’s rights. The talk will show the transformative potential of these stories while also considering their transferability to other settings, outlining routes for social learning and change.

Prof Weiwen Zhang, Professor: School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Head of Beijing Institute, Zhejiang University 

Title: Sunshine and Rain for Growth”: State–Market Collaboration and Urban Innovation In China 

This talk draws on the case of Hangzhou to rethink how state–market synergy shapes urban innovation in contemporary China. The well-known motto from the Hangzhou municipal government—“I’ll provide the sunshine and rain, and you focus on growing strong and healthy.”—encapsulates a distinctive Chinese logic of state–market collaboration. In this model, the government functions not merely as a regulator, but as a provider of institutional stability, public services, and enabling platforms, while market actors generate entrepreneurial energy and innovative momentum. Hangzhou’s governance approach—evident in initiatives such as the “six little dragons”, characteristic towns, public service reforms, and proactive talent strategies—demonstrates how state capacity and market dynamism can become mutually reinforcing. Prof Zhang will further explore how Hangzhou promotes institutional innovation, productive services, and digital governance, and will reflect on the broader implications of this model for understanding urban innovation globally.