Creating a new socio-technical regime in China: Evidence from the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Mei-Chih Hu a,1 , Ching-Yan Wu b, *, Tommy Shih c,2 a Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan b Department of Finance and International Business, Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan c Department of Business Administration, Lund University, Sweden 1. Introduction China has experienced astonishing economic growth over the past three decades and is expected to overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2020. The high-speed growth of the Chinese economy was achieved at a great cost to the environment. Unbreathable air, polluted and undrinkable water, loss of soil, a build-up of heavy metal contamination, and many other such problems must now be addressed for sustainable development to be achieved, and can only be accomplished as a result of significant changes to both social and technological systems. In particular, the roles of the central, regional, provincial, and city governments are integral to the promotion of eco-cities that take sustainability as their development model, and the setting of performance goals regarding the conservation and circulation of resources, and the utilization of renewable energies in the process of urbanization. Futures 70 (2015) 1–12 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Available online 23 April 2015 Keywords: Eco-City Tianjin Urbanization Socio-technical regime Transformation Economic transition A B S T R A C T The Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City (SSTEC) in China was designed to leverage Singaporean expertise in top-down city planning, systematic management, and water treatment technologies and act as a replicable hub-and-spoke model. This study shows that an expansion of the scale of urbanization, and its transformation into the focal point of the hub- and-spoke eco-city model will enable China to advance as an international pioneer, by the creation of a new socio-technical regime dependent on green and ecologically sustainable systems. In particular, the potential capacity of China’s new socio-technical regime, built on eco-cities, is based on its capability to (1) create a vision for a smart energy system; (2) drive down the cost of renewable energy equipment and devices; (3) support local industrial clusters for socio-economic development; (4) implement effective policies for city-level solutions; and (5) standardize and replicate these strategies in the new regime as a whole. In the top-down landscape approach, the public authority’s integrated administrative capability and capacity is important as a means by which to link the various types of stakeholders. This has to be done, in the process of managing a city’s transition and reducing the risk of transformational failure, by reinforcing the four types of capital assets – namely manufacturing capital, natural capital, human capital, and social capital. ß 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: No. 510, Zhongzheng Rd., Xinzhuang Dist., New Taipei City 24205, Taiwan. Tel.: +886 2 29052725; fax: +886 2 29019779. E-mail addresses: mchu@mx.nthu.edu.tw (M.-C. Hu), 121059@mail.fju.edu.tw (C.-Y. Wu), Tommy.Shih@fek.lu.se (T. Shih) 1 Postal address: No. 101, Section 2, Kuang-Fu Road, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan. 2 Postal address: Box 7080, SE-22007 Lund, Sweden. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Futures jou r nal h o mep ag e: w ww .elsevier .co m /loc ate/fu tu r es http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.04.001 0016-3287/ß 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.