Since 2000, China has entered into a new phase, which takes economic transformation and sustainable development as an important strategy for national, regional and urban development. Many scholars have discussed the pathways of globalization, innovation and development in China (Dicken, 1998; Wei, Y. H. D., 2007). Recently, with the rapid development and application of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies), internet dependent cities, resident mobility and social sustainability are also become hot topics in China (Zhen, Wang, & Wei, 2015). Therefore, this special issue addresses these four key issues: innovation, greening, mobility and sustainability.

The completed decomposition model combined with the decoupling index is used to analyze the contribution of each factor which influences energy related CO2 emission in 15 regions over the period 2000-2012. The results show that the major factors that influence CO2 emission in areas are industrial output effect and energy intensity effect, followed by the industrial structure effect, while the energy structure and energy emission intensity have a smaller effect. Moreover, a reduction potential model is implemented in order to investigate the emission reduction potential of regions and sub-industrial sectors. It is found that although most governments showed great enthusiasm in promoting emission reduction, most regions present no decoupling effect. It indicates that emission reduction efforts have not always proven effective till now, therefore, most regions, including Beijing, have great energy saving and emission reduction potential.

Having once been the headquarters of ‘Made in China,’ Shenzhen’s industry is currently undergoing profound change. The appearance of new urban places for technological innovation is reviving the ageing industrial processes of this manufacturing city. It is supposed to transform Shenzhen into the Silicon Valley of hardware. Two groups, one local, the shanzhai community made up of entrepreneurs and companies historically based on a strategy of imitating high end products, and the other, a more international maker community, are thought to be the main drivers of this change using values of ‘open innovation’. The building of this ecosystem relies largely on practices associated with being open-source. Like in California, open innovation contributed to the creation of resources for the development of a vast high-tech industry. This ethnographic field study shows how, while both communities, the international makers and the shanzhai, draw on open innovation, they do not have the same values. For the shanzhai, open innovation means total deregulation and a kind of coopetition that poorly masks fierce competition. For the makers, open innovation does not entirely eliminate the classic tension between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ commons in the world of makers. These two communities still rarely collaborate.

In the information era, the comprehension of space of flows has turned from elemental flows into a combination of technologies, activities and physical spaces with the perspective of a new mobility paradigm. However, how to measure space of flows is still an under-established issue in scholarly discussion. This paper aims to explore the evaluation methods of spatial mobility considering technological accessibility, intensity of activity and spatial activeness. By using residential activity dairies, the present Nanjing traffic system and land use, the spatial mobility of Nanjing was evaluated. The measurement results suggest the extent to which the space of flows affects the space of places, which is critical for understanding urban spatial reconstruction in the information era.

Following the worldwide trend of housing privatization, housing marketization reform was conducted by the Chinese government to tackle the giant housing shortage. However, since then, community development based on the relatively homogeneous work-unit compound has experienced radical transformations. The residential space in urban China has become more complicated, fragmented and segregated, and gated communities become the dominant component. However, are the new types of housing estates that have emerged after the reform more socially sustainable than the former? What are the typical issues of these housing estates from the perspective of social sustainability? Theoretically, the impact of housing marketization reform in China on the community level has received relatively less attention. Moreover, little research on the social sustainability has been conducted for cities and communities in mainland China. This paper aims to explore evolving housing estates and their social sustainability in China, using a case of Guangzhou, which enriches the international debates on social sustainability at the community level. The paper concludes that it is challenging to identify which types of communities are more socially sustainable, owing to the comprehensive nature of social sustainability. However, one type of community may have advantage over others in some aspects. The living environment of gated communities is indeed better than work-unit neighborhoods, while the social relations within the work-unit compounds are more harmonious.

Understanding cultural values is vital in tourism as these influence an individual’s travel experiences and expectations. Students represent an important segment of the international tourist population, and Chinese student tourists are an increasingly significant part of that segment. It is therefore important to understand how cultural values influence Chinese students’experiences and aspirations. Will their past travel experiences influence future aspirations? Using data collected from a free-elicitation method, this paper reports on the travel experiences and aspirations of 284 Chinese students. It explores the notional link between past experiences and future aspirations and discusses the impact of Chinese political history and cultural values on tourist experiences and motivations. Implications for marketing are also drawn.

City Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventory, a framework for measuring a city’s detailed emissions from all activities, provides scientific evidence for the purpose of policy-making. As one of the largest GHG emitters in the world, China aims to reduce CO2 emissions per unit of GDP to 60 to 65 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. However, city GHG inventories in China have not yet been published by the city governments. Furthermore, previous studies on city inventory accounting are neither complete nor globally comparable. Hence, a case study of Beijing was conducted for the purpose of reporting the city inventory completely and enabling data to be comparable internationally. This research quantifies Beijing’s latest emissions based on available data through multiple methods, including Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas emissions inventories (GPC), a method devised by the Japanese Ministry of Environment (Japanese Ministry of Environment, 2010) and a method from recent academic research on CO2 emissions in the Chinese iron and steel industry (Zhao, Y. Q., Li, & Li, 2012). According to these methods, Beijing’s GHG emissions were 373,558,617 t CO2 in 2012. Additionally, comparisons between Beijing and six other mega-cities of Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, Washington D.C., London and Paris show that Beijing’s 2012 GHG emission per capita and per 10,000 CNY GDP ranked the highest. This study creates a timely and relatively complete GHG emission inventory that can be widely applied for comparisons and presents recommendations for city inventory building.