The Main Functional Zoning strategy, set out in a 2010 national plan, classified the country's territory into categories such as optimised-development, key-development, restricted-development and prohibited-development areas. The aim was to steer where intensive urbanisation and industry should concentrate and where ecological and agricultural functions should be protected. It introduced a coordinated, top-down spatial template above the level of individual city plans. The framework fed into later resource and environmental targets and the unified territorial planning system.
It marked a shift to managing urbanisation at the national territorial scale, balancing growth zones against protected ecological space.
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