Objective  Park city is the latest urban development concept of people-centered ecological civilization thought developed by Xi Jinping, and a new model of sustainable urban construction. Many cities in China are already experimenting with park city, but they are still in their infancy. As a megacity and a demonstration zone entering the era of stock development and fine governance, Shenzhen provides a test object to explore the path of park city construction with its leading performance in the past. Over the past 43 years, Shenzhen has always insisted on city greening, and has obtained the construction achievement of "city of a thousand parks".

Methods  Based on the case study of the compilation of the Outline of Shenzhen Park City Planning (hereinafter referred to as the Outline), this research, by reviewing Shenzhen's urban and park development and analyzing the core challenges, summarizes the ideas and methods for building Shenzhen into a park city based on local characteristics, citizen needs and implementation weaknesses.

Results  Firstly, Shenzhen's urban and park development in the past 40 years can be divided into the four stages of basic construction, pattern exploration, high-speed increment, and pluralistic development. The research presents the planning-enabling characteristics of Shenzhen's urban park construction, which reveals that the planning method can become the main path to promote the construction of Shenzhen park city. Second, at present, the three main challenges for building Shenzhen into a park city are limited spatial increase, insufficient system synergy, and weak coordination between urban planning, construction and management departments. It is necessary to pay attention to the exploitation of the stock space potential, the formation of a common action principle, and the establishment of working system featuring multi-level linkage. Based on the theoretical research and the characteristics of Shenzhen City, the Outline puts forward the general idea of giving priority to the formulation of the planning outline in the initial stage of park city construction, to make Shenzhen a paradigm of park city. Specifically, the Outline firstly learns experience from three developed international cities with characteristics similar to Shenzhen, namely Singapore, London and Tokyo. The Outline indicates that Shenzhen should follow the international trend of returning to nature and make good use of its natural endowments to build itself into a park city, and green space should serve as the basis for urban spatial integration. After that, the Outline proposes five major programs in a more generalized way to build consensus among a wider range of urban action groups and then launches twenty key initiatives based on the five programs. On the basis of this, an indicator system and a complete process work framework are developed to ensure while-process consistency from planning to management. Finally, the Outline examines the core innovations explored in the five aspects: ecology, people-centeredness, operation, governance, and inclusiveness. In terms of ecology, the Outline focuses on the network-based integration of ecological elements and the naturalization of urban micro-spaces. On the people-centered side, the Outline first identifies areas that need to incorporate more parks and proposes the park-oriented transformation of ribbon green spaces as a solution thereof. Furthermore, the Outline decides to continue to improve park accessibility and establish park standards for improving park functions. In terms of operation, the Outline attempts to break the city-park boundary and integrate parks and functional urban facilities by proposing the concepts of park vitality center, park community, park neighborhood, and park complex. In terms of management, the Outline proposes to build a database and a management platform for park managers and to launch an interactive service platform for the public. In addition, the Outline emphasizes the necessity of valuing co-construction community gardens as a social governance tool. In terms of inclusiveness, the Outline proposes to unify various urban sectors to form a consensus framework and a systematic spatial framework. As indicated by the Outline, it is important to bring together multiple views and popularize the park city concept. During the compilation of the Outline, Shenzhen has explored a path to promote the building of a high-density megacity into a park city through the compilation of a master plan. The Outline has now shown positive results in reaching consensus, building the urban landscape, innovating the social governance model and promoting the transformation of green economy.

Conclusion  This research shows that it is effective to promote the construction of parks in high-density megacities through programmatic planning. The Outline opens up the vertical and horizontal paths of park construction, and effectively plays the role of overall coordination of the park city concept in urban living environment, ecosystem, social governance, and economic development, which is expected to provide path guidance for future park city planning and construction in China.