The Sino-European partnership was original in that it involved, as much as possible, the local authorities and economic actors of the Chinese cities in the project. The intensity of the exchanges and human links that have been established at the end of the three years of the project are difficult to measure, yet this is an essential element. In China, perhaps more than elsewhere, access to data and contact with key research personnel remains very complicated.

Aims to map the types of planning styles applicable for innovation-driven urbanization in the Chinese context, and to develop broader research implications for the study of urban planning and innovation. To this end, it presents a case study of the so-called ‘Dream Town’ Internet village for startups in the City of Hangzhou by drawing from interviews with urban actors. The discussion focuses on four main planning styles central for contemporary urbanization in China – rational, strategic, green, and collaborative – by identifying their relevance to the case of Dream Town.  A crucial issue when conducting fieldwork is developing a research design and strategies to deal with the complexity of the whole research path.

China has experienced rapid and strong economic development with high rates of growth of the GDP. This development, sustained by great public investments, may have produced, or changed, some territorial inequalities, focusing more in some regions with respect to others. With the aim to evaluate this process and its possible effects on Chinese society we conducted a spatial statistical analysis on regional inequalities in Zhejiang province, one of the most developed provinces of China.