How Can China Achieve Economic Transition with the Featured Town Concept? A Case Study of Hangzhou from an Evolutionary Perspective

The Chinese government launched the Feature Town to promote economic transition. But what the concept of Featured Town implies is still unclear and mostly conceived as a regular top-down policy measure. This paper argues that the concept would find its meaning only when enhanced by the business and civic society's participation. We employed relational and (co)evolutionary economic geography to identify its role in economic transition. We examined how the leading firm Alibaba co-evolved with Hangzhou city. We concluded that Featured Town is a complex adaptive system (CAS) where firms, agents, and institutes co-evolve with each other, revitalising urban geography, as that it is remoulded by the geography itself.