China's State Council recently issued an urban renewal plan during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) period, outlining core targets, major tasks and supporting policies.

The plan envisages substantial progress in urban renewal by 2030 across various areas: transforming urban development and construction methods, strengthening the foundation for safe development, improving service efficiency and enhancing the living environment. In addition, it also aims to accelerate the transition between old and new growth drivers, protect cultural heritage, highlight urban features and characteristics, and boost governance capacity. Ultimately, cities will become high-quality living spaces for all residents.

The plan aligns with the goal of building a modern people-centered city that is innovative, livable, beautiful, resilient, civilized and smart. It outlines six key tasks: fostering and expanding new growth drivers for urban development, creating high-quality urban living spaces, promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of urban development, enhancing urban safety and resilience, boosting the prosperity and development of urban culture, and improving urban governance capacity.

The plan also proposes seven policy measures: improving the implementation mechanism for urban renewal, establishing a sustainable investment and financing system for urban construction and operation, increasing support for revitalizing stock land, setting up a safety management system for the whole life cycle of buildings, building a multi-stakeholder collaborative participation mechanism, improving the system of laws, regulations and standards, and strengthening the supporting role of science, technology and talents.

Meanwhile, the plan clarifies 14 major projects and initiatives, including the construction and renovation of "good housing," the expansion and quality improvement of complete community construction, the renovation and upgrading of old neighborhoods and industrial zones, and the upgrading of municipal infrastructure.

In terms of intelligent construction, three key areas emerged.

First, industrial clusters for intelligent construction will be nurtured. Professional, modular and digital production systems are to be built around standard prefabricated components.

Second, innovation in intelligent construction technologies are planned. This includes developing AI-powered software for engineering projects, and scaling up the integrated innovation and pilot application of reliable technologies, such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), throughout the entire construction lifecycle. A number of flagship application scenarios will be created to showcase these technologies.

Third, it will advance the R&D and deployment of intelligent construction equipment, with a focus on automated construction machinery, construction robots and integrated construction operation platforms.

To advance the green and low-carbon transformation of urban development, the plan supports transforming and upgrading high-energy-consuming public buildings, scaling up green building development and establishing a building energy efficiency rating system. Green design and construction practices will be widely promoted across the industry.

Promoting green and low-carbon lifestyles is included in the plan, through advancing urban water conservation, building sponge cities, and deepening the development of climate-resilient cities. Construction will also be stepped up of facilities for the utilization and disposal of construction waste. The plan advocates green and low-carbon travel as well, calling for optimizing public transport networks and station layouts, and developing an urban green slow-traffic system.

To ensure safety, an "AI plus Security" enhancement project is expected, which aims to boost risk prevention and control capabilities.

In addition, raising the level of opening-up and cooperation of cities is vital.The plan supports cities with the necessary conditions to host major foreign affairs and diplomatic events, attract influential international organizations to establish their presence, and develop a number of international gateway hub cities and regional opening-up node cities.