Since the beginning of this year, the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has become a focus of attention. At the request of decision-makers, the three localities will break the mindset of “minding only one’s own plot of land” and move quickly to formulate an integrated development plan for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

When it comes to planning, the main body is the government. The government should do its own job well, such as maintaining social fairness and justice, which also includes taking the lead in designing and implementing urban planning well. The capital’s development strategy has changed several times. In the early 1980s, Beijing had already clearly stopped mentioning building an industrial center and instead sought to develop as a political and cultural center. However, in actual development, not a single center was actually reduced. Compared with other economies, over more than half a century of research and development, the government planning of the capital metropolitan area has not demonstrated the high level it should have.

On the matter of planning, if the government does not have a high level of capability, then from another perspective, can the market play a substitute role? Personally, I believe that replacing government planning with market trial and error is generally not feasible. In the concept of contiguous real estate, once the physical form is formed, it is too difficult to correct it afterward. From another perspective, the role of the market should be fully valued, but it is not simply a matter of allowing market entities to use trial and error to solve the top-level planning issues of land development and urban development in the overall development process.

The overall development design of various localities, as well as the integrated development design of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, must have high-standard long-term plans that can stand the test of history, with decision-makers making the final decision and departments specifically taking the lead in organizing planning. But in the end, there will always be disputes in the plan, and the opinions of experts may not be unified, so how should decision-makers make the final decision? This requires a high level of judgment. I believe that in the process of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration, planning must cover at least one to two hundred years of development. For example, the radial plan of Paris is indeed very imaginative. Along with the radial urban planning, there is also a drainage system. After several hundred years, it still has sufficient capacity and has given rise to many urban stories. How were decisions made over the course of several hundred years? I do not believe this was simply the result of market trial and error; rather, it required decision-makers to have high judgment and high-level top-level planning.

High-level top-level planning should include the rationalization of functional allocation under the concept of a metropolitan area, the rationalization of industrial allocation under the concept of industrial clusters, the rationalization of the functions of culture, education, science, health, and social undertakings, as well as the ecological environment and cultural requirements of urban-rural integration.

After top-level planning, the problem of the three localities of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei “not buying into each other” must be resolved. If all parties do not buy into each other during implementation, then even the best plan will be difficult to implement. Whether there is an effective execution and coordination mechanism that transcends the narrow perspective of the administrative divisions of the three localities and truly seeks reasonable win-win outcomes is also a major test for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration.

A negative example is the construction and development of Langfang Oriental University Town. Logically speaking, with Tianjin on one side and Beijing on the other, and Langfang as a “low-lying area” in between, building a university town is very reasonable. However, after several years of development, this university town has not been very successful. Related problems include, first, the developer itself, which obtained part of the land and illegally operated a golf course; second, the transportation operation relationship was not smoothed out, which involves the issue of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordination. Without surrounding supporting facilities and cultural accumulation, business failure was an inevitable result.

The planning that the government should have done was not in place, the enthusiasm of market entities was distorted, and after conflicts of interest arose, there was no effective government coordination. As a result, a meaningful undertaking was delayed and ruined, and the interests of all parties became a “lose-lose” outcome. This matter should be said to offer more lessons than anything else, including government planning, the role of the market, and how the two sides can form a virtuous interaction. This major article is indeed worth summarizing well.

In terms of interaction between the government and market entities, if the spirit of the rule of law and contract society can truly be followed and private market entities can be brought in, mechanisms of public-private partnership under the PPP concept, also known as “government and social capital cooperation,” should be encouraged so that the hand of the market can fully play its optimizing role. On the one hand, the government should take the lead and let experts fully exert their wisdom to form a high-level overall plan. On the other hand, under such planning, existing market entities should be allowed to participate in community development or complex development, or even upgrade to contiguous development. Of course, this should be guaranteed as much as possible by a relatively high-level legal environment and contractual spirit.

The government allows enterprises to participate actively, and what enterprises should receive is a long-term stable but not particularly high-level return. The government should neither overstep its role nor be absent, and should seize the strategic opportunity of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration with high-level decision-making so that this round can have a decent overall plan; at the other end, market entities should be allowed to fully play their role, attracting and seeking international and domestic entities to participate together in infrastructure construction such as transportation, water affairs, electricity, waste treatment, and greening. Letting the two hands of government and market truly complement each other in advancing Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration cooperation is the most desirable effect. In this process, social governance also needs to be optimized. When the concepts of new urbanization, new rural construction, and urban-rural integration are merged, social governance should be upgraded with a focus on problem orientation.

It should be said that Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration also provides an opportunity to encourage us to think a little higher and comprehensively consider how to improve the level of public governance under problem orientation. This governance should be interaction among multiple entities, not simply top-down. It should optimally combine management and self-management, organization and self-organization, regulation and self-regulation, seeking the greatest inclusiveness and the greatest release of vitality and potential.