The “medical city” in China’s transforming urbanism: conceptualizing the medical-university-industry linkage

The changing state-market interests and civic-health relations in advancing and consuming the healthcare industry have reshaped urban development strategies in China. Hospitals, universities, and tech offices are integrated into the “medical city” as a new scheme for producing urban spaces. In comparison to “eds and meds” in the United States, this study proposes the medical-university-industry linkage framework to offer insights into the medical city in China. It argues that despite the new features, the medical city is a product of profit-driven real estate speculation camouflaged by healthcare businesses. The paper uses the Peking University Healthcare City as a case study to examine the strategies that the public and private actors deployed to justify land and legitimize place-making in the medical-university-industry linkage. Based on that, the research also proposes an optimized medical-university-industry linkage that capitalizes on knowledge production and consumption in the healthcare industry, which could serve as the guide for future medical cities.