To what extent can technology compensate for institutional failure in an urban environmental management setting: The case of China

The sustainability of the urban environment has been on the minds of policymakers around the globe for decades as megacities continue to grow and thrive contrary to expectation. The common wisdom is that environmental stress will severely curtail any future potential. China is in some respect at the forefront of this debate with cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, which seem to have made reasonable accommodation with their limited natural resources. This is the result of a unique combination of institutional reform and judiciously applied technologies borrowed from elsewhere. This continues to be a great dynamic whereby urban environmental management is continually one step behind economic progress. China's environmental path bears watching since much can be learned and it has become very clear that the rest of the globe will either suffer or benefit as a result.