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This paper provides an interpretation of the nature of 'environment' as a growing concept in China's urban planning system. It argues that environment takes on three properties in planning: (1) a policy area operating within a complex web of state bodies, regulated by acts of different sectoral actors, (2) an aggregate of scaled spaces, each with their own operational strategies and environmental understanding and (3) a concept in proliferation, bounded up with a temporality of past, present and future. These arguments are elaborated through a discussion of the changing environmental discourses in the planning of Shenzhen, 1980 to 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]