Innovative Chief Designer System in Design Governance

In 2021, the urbanization rate of China's permanent population has exceeded 66%, and urban development will enter a new stage of high-quality urban space construction. The focus of this stage is to revitalize the existing space and promote refined urban governance. In China's current administrative management system, prefecture-level and district-level government departments are the main forces in urban construction and management. At present, district-level government departments have insufficient professional and technical capabilities, low organizational efficiency, and unclear evaluation standards for planning and construction management. In addition, the regulatory plan that has been compiled in the urban area is not sufficient to deal with multiple development goals and the interests of multiple disciplines, and there is an urgent need to use relevant professional technical forces for auxiliary management. Since 2014, the Guangzhou Municipal Government has tried to seek outside professional technical support to explore the "Urban Area Chief Designer System", It consists of 1 urban design or architectural design technical experts led "N" personnel who in planning, architecture, landscape, transportation, municipal administration, historical preservation and other related fields related professional and technical personnel to form a "chief designer team" (that is a non-governmental public organizations that funded and recognized by the government). The team serves as a semi-formal governance force to assist the government's planning and management work. This system is a new system created to solve the problem of urban design’s implementation management and control. It has been used in nearly 30 key areas in the Pearl River Delta cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai. In recent years, the new research field of "design governance" has emerged in the discipline of urban design. Design Governance is an innovative academic that introduced the concept of urban governance into the field of urban design by the British urban design scholar Matthew Carmona (2016) Concept, the current domestic and foreign scholars on its practice and theoretical research is still in its infancy. This article takes the governance practices of the "Urban Area Chief Designer System" implemented by Tianhe District and Yuexiu District of Guangzhou City, China as the research object, and conducts field observations on the related work of the "chief designer team" (the author started from 2019 join in the "chief designer team" of Guangzhou Yuexiu District, and were dispatched to the Yuexiu District Planning Bureau's resident office assist work), and used unstructured interview methods to interview about 10 government civil servants and 10 the "chief designer team" members; in the research on the concept of design governance and its theoretical framework On this basis, analyze the design governance practices of the "chief designer team" involved in the planning and management of district-level government departments. The research found that the role of The planners and architects in the "Chief Designer Team" in the governance process is differentiated, playing different roles in different governance segments and using diversified governance tools to handle different governance tasks. Practice has proved that the "chief designer team" helps to promote the city efficiently Design’s implement and realize more inclusive and innovative multiple design governance. This research innovatively expands the research framework of the role of design governance subject and their behavior patterns, and analyzes the implementation path of the "chief designer team" participation in design governance, and provides practical cases of design governance at the urban area in China, hoping to inspire more at home and abroad Scholars conduct joint research on this topic.