Abstract: An accurate understanding of urban planning requires examination from three dimensions: governmental function, professional practice, and academic discipline. Each has followed a distinct evolutionary path. For a considerable period, urban planning in China exhibited a "three-dimensional isomorphism" among these dimensions. Although this configuration supported rapid urbanization, it can no longer meet the demands of Chinese modernization and generates inherent tensions with governance modernization in value orientation and utility assessment. Beyond this three-dimensional perspective, urban planning today should be understood as a governance instrument through which the Party and the state advance the broad project of Chinese modernization. Its effectiveness depends on reconstructing production relations among stakeholders, examining institutional conditions and governance foundations before planning elements are supplied, and evaluating the sustainability and performance of implementation and operation afterward. The urban planning system should therefore be improved by establishing a people-centered urban governance mechanism grounded in people's rights.