Starting as a small fishing village, Shanghai has become an internationally renowned global city (Sha et al. 2014). However, this process also resulted in tremendous urban expansion and an enormous conversion of agricultural land into the urban fabric (Suppl. material 1). The most rapid expansion had occurred between 2000 and 2004, when the city added 243 km² of urban area. Between 2008 and 2018, built-up areas especially developed in the districts of Pudong, Songjiang, Jiading and Qingpu (Fig. 1a) (Liu et al. 2022). The current land use distribution ((Fig. 1b) shows a strong urban‒rural divide from the districts bordering the city centre towards Qingpu and Chongming, with significant proportions of water ecosystems. In contrast, Fengxian and Jinshang are characterized by the predominant use of farmland.

Figure 1.

Land use (a) and land use distribution in Shanghai districts (b) (data base: a) WorldCover, Zanaga et al. 2021, b) calculations based on the dataset provided by Data Center for Resources and Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences 2016.

Figure 2.

Overview of relations to individual ecosystem services in the analysed Master Plans.

In accordance with the approaches of Kabisch (2015) and Hansen et al. (2015), the TEEB (2011) framework from the Manual for Cities was chosen for the classification of services and adjusted based on additional identified urban ES (Table 1). it ensures the intended flexibility to relate passages in the documents to specific ES. More differentiated classifications such as CICES with > 180 ES (Haines-Young and Potschin 2018) were available, but would have made it more difficult to assign text passages to ES and draw clear conclusions.

The term GI points to the spatial arrangement of natural elements that form a contiguous network (Benedict and McMahon 2006, Meerow and Newell 2017, Mell 2015). Blue infrastructure, i.e., networks of streams and lakes, is either unspoken or explicitly included. In this work, merely mentioning the existence of natural elements without addressing their connectivity was not considered sufficient. Thus, we did not attribute indicators such as green space per capita to GI. The same is true for so-called greenways, a network of bicycle paths. The second meaning associated with the term GI is ES. This understanding may have been obscured at times by the term multifunctionality. Wherever ES were mentioned together with GI, both terms were counted in the respective category. “Green” in expressions such as green development, green transformation, and green food were not seen as indicators of GI.

The documents of interest for the analysis include the Shanghai Masterplan 2017–2035 as well as nine district Master Plans for the suburban districts: Baoshan, Chongming, Fengxian, Jiading, Jinshan, Minhang, Pudong, Qingpu, and Songjiang. They cover all district Master Plans that are specifically addressed in the implementation section of the municipal Master Plan (Shanghai Urban Planning and Land Resource Administration 2018). District Master Plans were developed by different teams that had to follow the same guideline (Shanghai Urban Planning and Land Resource Administration 2017), which was revised and issued in December 2017. All plans were available online in Chinese. For the Shanghai Master Plan, a printed, officially translated English version was acquired. For language proficiency reasons, the other planning documents were translated into English via the freely available machine translation tools Google Translator, Bing Translator, and DeepL. Combining the translation tools helped improve the quality of the translation. The postediting of the translation outputs included consultations with native speakers about unclear passages. The machine translation of Chinese to English, combined with postediting, is an accepted, resource-efficient method for cross-language research (Wu and He 2012; Turner et al. 2015; Fan et al. 2020). Some of the documents (cf. Suppl. material 2) are marked as public readings (公众读本, gōngzhong duběn); however, considering their availability, it may be assumed that all analysed plans are a public version that might differ from the legally binding plans in how detailed they are or which terms are used (Thøgersen 2006; Zhang et al. 2018). Within plans that are not specifically marked as public readings, there is no statement that supports or excludes this assumption of exclusion.

The document analysis was performed based on the methodology of Kabisch (2015), Hansen et al. (2015) and Geneletti et al. (2020). First, the plans were checked for references according to the conceptual background of ES. A differentiation was made between explicit and implicit references to account for conscious and unconscious uptake (Hansen et al. 2015). Explicit mentions also included earlier or similar terminologies for ES, such as nature’s services and ecological services, as well as the exact use of the term. Furthermore, the search for explicit references also included a keyword search in the Chinese documents for 生态系统服务 (shēngtai xitǒng fuwu, ecosystem services) and 绿色基础设施 (lǜse jīchǔ sheshī, GI) to be more sensitive to possible loss of information by translation. Moreover, in the process of translation and analysis, additional Chinese keywords were identified that showed terminological proximity to the concepts. They were also searched for in the original documents, considered in context, and classified as explicit or implicit, as appropriate. Generally, an implicit reference meant that “rather than concrete services, benefits humans derive from nature or specific ecosystems are mentioned” (Kabisch 2015) or, for GI, that a similar conceptual understanding was evident. Second, we looked for specific services or benefits from the ecosystems mentioned in the documents. To rate the quality of consideration of a service, a score system from 0-3 was chosen (Table 2).

The quantitative analyses were limited to the absolute and relative frequencies of occurrence of explicit or implicit mentions of ES and the term GI in the Master Plans. To relate land use to ES, we calculated Pearson correlation coefficients (r) between the proportions of selected land use categories in the districts (according to Chinese Academy of Sciences 2016) and the corresponding number of mentions of ES categories in the districts' master plans. Here, we understand the correlation coefficients as descriptive measures and do not perform significance tests as we are not looking for models and probabilities.

The choice of Chinese keywords was based on consultation with experts from the college of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, familiar with both concepts and thus able to provide a reliable translation.

The individual terms are presented and discussed in more detail in the following chapters.

The term ES (or its Chinese equivalent 生态系统服务) did not appear in any of the analysed documents. Instead, similar terms were used throughout the documents 33 times with a maximum of nine terms in the Chongming Master Plan (Table 3). While they all have some terminological or conceptual relation to ES, they require a more context-sensitive, qualitative consideration. Most frequently (12 out of the 33 times), the term “ecological benefits” (生态效益, shēngtai xiaoyi) was used. It appeared throughout all Master Plans at least once, except for Baoshan and Songjiang, and was included in Qingpu and Minhang three times, respectively. While none of the Master Plans specified or elaborated on the ecological benefits, the term was often directly related to specific ecosystems such as farmland or agricultural land (Shanghai Urban Planning and Land Resource Administration 2018; PG Minhang 2019; PG Qingpu 2019), forests (PG Fengxian 2019; PG Chongming 2018; PG Qingpu 2019), water (PG Fengxian 2019; PG Minhang 2019) or even a combination of those three (Suppl. material 4).

Moreover, references have focused on increasing investment in ecological benefits or expressed a general aim to enhance these benefits (PG Pudong 2018; PG Jiading 2019; PG Minhang 2019). The lack of elaboration regarding the term complicates its subsumption into the overall concept of ES. The idea that there are benefits that have their origin in nature and ecosystems is indeed at the core of the approach, which is why the term ‘ecological benefits’ is considered a direct reference, even though it remains questionable whether this is proof of a deliberate adoption of the ES concept.

Another closely related term found in Fengxian (twice), Jiading (once), Songjiang (once) and the Shanghai Master Plan (once) is ecological service (生态服务, shēngtai fuwu). It differs from the original term only through the reduction of the two characters for the system (系统, xitǒng) and is thus very close to an exact uptake. All five references contain formulations that indicate an improvement or enrichment of ecological services (PG Fengxian 2019) or their value (Shanghai Urban Planning and Land Resource Administration 2018; PG Songjiang 2019). In the Jiading Master Plan, the ecological services are related specifically to forests (PG Jiading 2019), and in the Chongming Master Plan, they are related to arable land, ecological corridors, and red line areas (PG Chongming 2018). While the context in which the term is used generally seems to fit the overall approach, the separation of ecological services with leisure and recreation functions that is presented within the Fengxian Master Plan differs from the conceptual background of ES, which also includes cultural services and does not regard them separately (Suppl. material 4).

Such terms were only counted as a possible direct reference to the ecosystem service concept if they were not used directly in the context of similar approaches, e.g. of sustainability. Thus, one appearance of the term ecological benefits in the Pudong masterplan and one in the Shanghai masterplan were excluded from the count.

Ecological services sometimes appear as a part of the ecological service function (生态服务功能, shēngtai fuwu gōngneng) in a total of nine passages in Baoshan (twice), Chongming (three times), Jiading (once), Minhang (once), Pudong (once) and the Shanghai Master Plan (once). Ecological landscape service (生态景观服务, shēngtai jǐngguān fuwu) is another relevant term. It appears only once, in a text passage of the Minhang Master Plan (Suppl. material 4). The passage is exceptional in that it refers to multiple services, presents livability as a consequence of those services, and specifically mentions GI and therefore the relationship between the two concepts, even though, once again, without the use of the exact term ES.

Indirect references related to ES often included a specific or implicit mention of individual services (see following section) or expressed the beneficial character or positive effects of nature more generally (Suppl. material 5).

Among the analyzed passages, between 47 (Baoshan) and 96 (Fengxian) were related to individual ES. As an individual passage often referred to multiple services, the total number of mentioned services ranges between 81 for Baoshan and 151 in the Minhang district Master Plan. However, not all ES were covered in the documents (Fig. 3) and there are differences in the services that were mentioned in each Master Plan as well as in the strength of the references (Fig. 2).

Figure 3.

Share of mentioned ecosystem services per Master Plan by category (n = total number of mentioned ecosystem services).

While nearly all master plans mention natural elements of GI, the prevalence of connectivity and the network characteristics of GI are evident for approximately 50–75% of all references to GI in the plans. The passages within the Master Plans predominantly refer to physical features; they do not express ecological relationships or ecosystem functions (Inostroza et al. 2020) in a strict sense. In many passages of the text, this is expressed in the idea of ecological networks, which are planned both for the municipality and for all districts. The city-wide ecological network consists of green belts, ecological corridors, green wedges, parks at different scales (national, national, city, district and community), ecological reserves and water bodies and is further linked to the greenway system to combine ecological objectives and human usage (Shanghai Urban Planning and Land Resource Administration 2018). Thus, references often show other characteristics of GI (multi-scales, multi-functionality and multiple benefits). For example, a passage from the Minhang district Master Plan illustrates how the overall municipal ecological network from the Shanghai Master Plan continues within plans at the lower level (Suppl. material 7).

Overall, the multiscale approach of GI is included in 28.6% (Shanghai Master Plan) to 47.9% (Minhang) of all references to GI. Apart from the ecological network, it also becomes apparent in the considerations of interdistrict and interregional relationships regarding ecological aspects as well as in the planning of GI elements at different spatial levels within the districts and the municipality. For example, a section in the Shanghai Master Plan, including a map, shows the role of the city within the region and its ecologically sensitive areas (Suppl. material 7).

In the district Master Plans, one finds references to neighbouring districts or regions, but references that are concerned with different scales within the districts are more common (Suppl. material 7).

References to (multiple) benefits of GI, which can be understood as ES, are also evident within the plans, varying between an inclusion of 26.3% (Baoshan) and 62.1% (Fengxian) of all GI-related passages. In general, benefits were regularly mentioned in such references, which were also considered as a combined reference to GI and ES. The considered benefits are either mentioned nonspecifically or associated with a specific ecosystem service. While the notion of multifunctionality is similar to the idea of GI providing benefits, the frequency within the passages was considerably lower (between 13.2% and 36.4%).

The lack of further explanation makes it difficult to judge the conceptual uptake of the ES approach, especially since the differences between ecological services and ecological service functions is not always clear from the context. Terminological similarities to ecosystem functions (Inostroza et al. 2020) and the ES that are obtained through them could be intentional as well as by chance. However, despite the unclear conceptual relationship, it was possible to identify a pattern for ecological benefits, ecological services as well as ecological service functions: the intent to improve or increase them as well as the relationship with specific ecosystems, mainly farmland, forests and water, instead of a classification related to individual benefits or those of common frameworks.

The analysis reveals that the term "ES” was not explicitly mentioned in any of the plans, neither in the Master Plan of Shanghai nor in the district Master Plans of Baoshan, Chongming, Fengxian, Jiading, Jinshan, Minhang, Pudong, Qingpu and Songjiang. Instead, a number of terms were found that indicate a conceptual similarity. According to Hansen et al. (2015), terms like ecological benefits or ecological values can suffice to assume an uptake into planning, and terminological differences should not be overrated due to linguistic particularities. That the term itself is not integrated therefore at least indicates a missing consideration of the international and national discourse. Given the overall rather limited use of related terms and the presence of passages that express a view towards nature that contradicts the conceptual background of ES, the overall integration of ES in the Master Plans can best be classified as implicit. Indirect references to ES are often linked to specific ecosystems (mainly forest, water, wetlands, farmland) and not classified in the categories provided by the international classification frameworks (TEEB 2010, Maes et al. 2012, Haines-Young and Potschin 2018). References to individual services exist throughout the plans with varying importance among the different services and among Master Plans.

Although important aspects of GI belong to the traditional topics of landscape and urban planning, such as green rings, buffers, belts or wedges (Zepp 2018, Kirby et al. 2024), the term GI stands out by emphasizing the network character of the ecosystemically related natural elements and their ES. Furthermore, the term GI is associated with the aspect that GI is strategically planned.

In this regard, there are deficits in a majority of the plans, as the individual characteristics of GI are often presented in a way where at least one core aspect of the concept (connectivity of the network, multiple ES or benefits, strategic planning idea) is missing. In Baoshan only one passage (2.6%) demonstrates all aspects of GI while this was the case for at least 12 passages (18.2%) in Fengxian. Such comprehensive references often related to the previously mentioned ecological networks or greenways where the overall explanation for these was more extensive (Shanghai Urban Planning and Land Resource Administration 2018; PG Fengxian 2019; PG Qingpu 2019; PG Songjiang 2019). They are the closest conceptual references to GI that exist within the plans apart from the direct use of relevant terminology. The master plans of Minhang and Chongming districts have precisely adopted the concept of GI, which appears to be a promising starting point for future in-depth planning considerations.

Language barriers pose a particular challenge when concepts from predominantly English literature are taken up and translated into Chinese documents. Linguistic and cultural biases cannot be excluded. Therefore, we left room for wide interpretations adopting a general understanding of “ES governance” (Sattler et al. 2018). We focused on the goal to examine in which respect “decisions on the basis of the ecosystem’s capacity to provide services” (Ronchi 2018) have entered planning and decision-making.

The decision to use the TEEB classification of ES in our analysis may have influenced the results. The TEEB category “carbon sequestration and storage” (TEEB 2011) is quite broad. In a narrow sense, carbon storage is not an ES as there is no continuous flow of benefits to humans. However, neglecting carbon storage would not have made a significant difference in Shanghai, as the proportion of forest area in Shanghai is almost negligible and consists mainly of afforestation, which actually contributes to carbon sequestration. The ES classified in TEEB as “tourism” is inappropriate as it denotes an activity mainly associated with visits for vacation or business purposes. The term does not address nature's contribution of people. Consequently, in the CICES classification (Haines-Young and Potschin 2018) "tourism" has been removed from the list of ES. As, in the Master Plans, "tourism" is the dominant cultural ES, fewer ES would have been counted if the CICES classification had been used as the basis for the frequency analysis of ES in the Master Plans.