This report is the result of the work of nine planning professionals who took part in the UPAT workshop in Shantou, China, in the period 10-16, March 2013. One of the challenges facing Shantou in the future is to regenerate the historic downtown. The city of Shantou has a 150-year heritage. Now, the Shantou city region contains about 2000 square kilometres and the Shantou central city has about 100 square kilometre with 1,2 million inhabitants. The central city grew from a 0,5 square kilometre old town along an inner sea bay. Whilst the principles of organic regeneration and expansion apply to the city region where new spaces will be...

The workshop was hosted by the Shantou Planning Bureau and the Institute of Urban Planning and Design of the Nanjing University. These institutions were awarded with the 2012 ISOCARP Award for Excellence for the integrated strategy and the focus on sustainability and organic transformation as proposed in The Shantou Strategic Development Plan. Shantou is a seaport with 5,5 million inhabitants in the province of Guangdong and a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) since 1980. The five SEZ’s – Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Xiamen and Shantou cities and Hainan Province—represent the most progressive policy for reform and trade. Even with all these...

To the south of Shantou, in Guangdong Province, lies a vast area that can be characterised as a “Desakota” area. A Desakota area is in origin an agricultural area in Asia were the villages (“desa” in Indonesian) and agricultural lands are rapidly changing towards intensive and densely built cities (“kota” in Indonesian) with a mixture of small and larger industries, housing for local inhabitants and immigrant workers. The Shan Nan Desakota Area has a surface area of about 600 km2 and contains an estimated 1,3 million inhabitants. In the process of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation historic and useful structures, such as the delicate...