Bottom-Up Empowerment, Local Partnership, and Sustainable Action: Enlightenments From Localism and Neighbourhood Plan in UK and Suggestions for Urban-Rural Integrated Plan in China

Since 2004, the 'Local Government Modernization Agenda' has promoted the concept of community action in UK, therefore, local power become increasingly important in decision-making and policy-delivery. Similarly, implementation of political and economic reforms from 2013 can be understood as a prelude to social reform pursued by the new leaders of China's government. Automatically, urban-rural integrated plan is highly expected to relieve or resolve urban-rural issues especially local conflicts under the background of 'New Normal'.This article tries to make a brief summary of the background, concept, decision-making and action mechanism of community action plan in UK, using 16 cases from England, Wales and Scotland, and brings in a comparison with urban-rural integrated plans from local governments in China. It considers that we are facing the same challenges of economic and environmental globalization. Therefore, with the core issues of interest reallocation, community action becomes a key to urban-rural sustainable development. However, due to the bureaucratic inertia of planning, top-down perspective and lack of partnership, blueprint plan restricts the sustainable goals achievement in China.Furthermore, this article makes suggestions for local urban-rural integrated plan in China. Bottom-up empowerment: arousing common goals from local environmental, economic, social concerns to enhance community social capital. Local partnership: cooperating with community-based power, especially remaining collective organizations in the suburban districts or villages, to form grassroots-led decision-making platform including government and other stakeholders. Sustainable action: turning integrated plans from blueprint plan to action plan with clear goals, participations and monitoring indicators to keep them lasting and effective.