In the lingering August heat, Panzhihua City is experiencing a wave of tourism and residential migration. On trains from Chengdu to Panzhihua, a significant number of passengers are the elderly and young children.
In recent years, Panzhihua, historically known for its industry, has been steadily improving its urban functions and quality, aiming to build a city suitable for living, working, and tourism, while positioning itself as a sunshine health and wellness destination. By the end of 2025, Sichuan Province designated Panzhihua as a pilot city for enhancing territorial spatial planning capabilities. The provincial Department of Natural Resources, in collaboration with Chengdu and Panzhihua, has established a joint working mechanism to deeply engage in Panzhihua's territorial spatial planning. Currently, Panzhihua has entered a critical period of urban renewal and functional optimization. As urban space enters a stock era, based on the reality of an industrial city's transformation, how will planning precisely explore the path and draw a new blueprint for the city? And how will updates make urban life better?
Diagnosing Urban Issues and Improving the Comprehensive Planning System
Over 60 years ago, Panzhihua rose from the mountains at the border of Sichuan and Yunnan. This is a typical resource-based city, established for its mines and thriving on its steel industry. At the city's founding, it adopted a development model of "production first, life second; factories first, city second," which spurred rapid industrial growth but also left many shortcomings, including scattered spatial layouts, chaotic traffic organization, and poor quality of urban scenery. A resident living in the old city for over 50 years, Wang Yuanyuan, felt this acutely: "The old city area is crowded with old industrial and mining enterprises. You see factories within the city, villages next to factories, and the overall environment is poor. Some roads are narrow and congested, making it inconvenient to cross the street, which affects daily travel."
In recent years, Panzhihua has focused on promoting high-quality development, high-quality life, and efficient governance, with territorial spatial planning becoming a key tool. To improve the level of urban and rural planning in Panzhihua, in November 2025, the provincial Department of Natural Resources established a resident service working group. Multiple planning experts came to provide a package of technical services. While addressing local planning and construction challenges, the aim was to form replicable and scalable experience to support the province's policy-making. The working group comprehensively surveyed the city's development pain points and difficulties, worked with local authorities to identify the most urgent issues, and formed 22 key work measures across ten major areas. During this period, the working group fully participated in the formulation of major plans for Panzhihua, reviewing over 90 various plans including overall urban design and urban renewal area planning, and providing over 410 suggestions and opinions. "We integrate control requirements for mountain-water layout, urban structure, landscape features, and architectural form into the overall and detailed plans, embedding landscape control throughout the entire planning process," a leader of the working group said. For example, when reviewing the overall tourism plan for Panzhihua's Donghua Mountain, the working group suggested that the building volume should be coordinated with the mountain's size and should not be too large, to avoid damaging the mountain ridge line and skyline. A shortage of talent also hinders grassroots planning work. To address the lack of professional personnel and insufficient management refinement, the working group adopted a "bring in + go out" model, planning tiered, field-specific, and phased professional training rotations to improve planning efficiency. Regarding the institutional system, by the end of 2025, Panzhihua issued opinions proposing 17 tasks to build a planning management system that covers the entire area, is orderly connected, and has effective control. "Following the requirement of 'planning before construction, design before construction,' we have established a hierarchical and classified review mechanism to effectively strengthen the guiding and constraining role of territorial spatial planning, achieving a 'unified chessboard' for the city's planning work," said an official from the Panzhihua City Natural Resources and Planning Bureau.
Relying on the Mountain-Water Foundation to Shape the City's Unique Landscape
On a summer evening, tourist Li Chenghao stood on Panzhihua's Donghua Mountain, using his phone to capture the moment of the setting sun. Overlooking the entire city from the mountaintop, Donghua Mountain acts like a city balcony, offering a panoramic view. The Jinsha River winds through the city like a ribbon. Panzhihua's terrain is mainly low and medium mountains, with over 80 rivers distributed across the area. The grand mountains and waters give Panzhihua a unique mountain city character, but the steep terrain also presents challenges for urban development: mountains are difficult to climb, water is hard to access, and the landscape is in sight but difficult to integrate with the city. How to protect and utilize the mountains and waters, highly integrating them with the city, is a key question for Panzhihua's urban planning and construction. Based on territorial spatial planning and detailed plans, Panzhihua, following the idea of overall coordination and key breakthroughs, focuses on four major issues: poor urban scenery, low quality of towns, suboptimal environment in industrial parks, and indistinct cultural tourism features. It is developing special plans and key area planning schemes to accelerate the construction of a multi-level planning results system and improve refined management. Among these, efforts are focused on preparing the overall urban design of the central city to shape an urban landscape rich in regional characteristics and humanistic charm. "Special plans focus on specific areas, further improving the depth and quality of detailed plans and enhancing planning management efficiency," the working group leader explained. The overall urban design can control and guide elements such as the shaping of mountain-specific landscape features, landscape sight corridors, and building color and form. The Donghua Mountain, located in the city's core area, is a key planning area. "We are preparing the overall tourism plan for Donghua Mountain, upgrading it as a 'city living room'," said an official from the Panzhihua City Natural Resources and Planning Bureau. Notably, based on advanced city experience and Panzhihua's actual situation, the working group summarized 15 planning techniques for shaping the unique characteristics of a mountain city. Through fine design and utilization, the quality of urban public spaces is improved, achieving "small investment, large returns." "Mountain cities have steep slopes, sharp bends, and numerous stairways, making daily travel and activities inconvenient for the elderly and young children. The walking and recreation experience for out-of-town tourists is also poor. We should accelerate the aging-friendly and child-friendly renovation of slow-traffic spaces, public spaces, and key attractions," the working group leader gave an example, such as Hong Kong's "Everyone Can Walk" plan, which involves transforming stairs into slopes, adding escalators, and installing mountain cable cars at key nodes.
Preserving Industrial Memory and Improving Urban Life Quality
Entering Panzhihua's Lanjian Community, a strong sense of the era is palpable. The bronze "City Origin" sign on the ground seems to narrate the history of Panzhihua's urban development. As a core remnant of the Panzhihua Iron and Steel Plant's rear base and the Lanjian Iron Mine residential area during the Third Front Construction period, this place has preserved the street layout and industrial landscape of the 1970s and 1980s intact. "Previously, the corridor walls were mottled, the roads were potholed, and the wires were tangled. After the renovation, the red brick exterior walls of the old factory buildings were preserved, the roads were widened, and parking spaces were added. Walking through the alleys brings back childhood memories. The renovation didn't change the look of the historic buildings, but it has genuinely improved our living conditions," said resident Li Changqing. Beyond the protective renewal of old buildings, scene-based operations have brought the entire block to life. The reporter saw old photos hanging on the walls of the alleys, and old objects placed at stairwell corners, turning the entire block into a flowing museum, with exhibits and stories everywhere. As a traditional industrial and mining city, Panzhihua faces challenges in its critical period of urban renewal and functional optimization, including a large amount of existing industrial land and prominent shortcomings in old residential facilities. Since 2025, Panzhihua has systematically planned and implemented a three-year urban renewal action plan. That year, focusing on the renewal of old residential areas, old blocks, and old factory zones, it fully launched the renewal of 18 key areas. In 2026, it will promote the renewal of another 6 key areas, planning to implement 234 projects. Territorial spatial planning control requirements are also integrated throughout the urban renewal process. "We have taken the lead in formulating the working mechanism for urban renewal planning and design, organized the preparation of planning schemes for key renewal areas, and clarified the use of a 'district/county review - city-level planning and design working group consultation - city planning committee deliberation' method to conduct multi-level and comprehensive reviews of urban renewal special plans, area planning, and project implementation plans, ensuring the scientific and reasonable nature of the plans and schemes," an official from the Panzhihua City Natural Resources and Planning Bureau explained. During the urban renewal process, the policy "toolkit" is also being improved simultaneously. The reporter learned that focusing on key stages such as land transfer, planning permits, and real estate registration, Panzhihua is strengthening policy supply. It has introduced support measures for the complete set renovation of dilapidated and dangerous housing and the optimization of floor area ratio determination, continuously improving the policy support system for urban renewal. "We are also identifying bottlenecks and blockages in the natural resources field related to urban renewal, forming a list of problems and a ledger of needs. Drawing on the advanced experience of developed regions, we will further deepen reforms, strengthen systematic planning and overall coordination, and accelerate the issuance of targeted and operable technical standards and policy guidelines," said an official from the provincial Department of Natural Resources.
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