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Inside China's 80 Million Person Urban Megaregions
Wade Shepard
Oct 6, 2016 @ 01:24 PM
The high-speed train began rolling away from the platform at Shanghai’s Hongqiao station and I was shot down the spine of what is rapidly becoming the Yangtze River Delta megaregion. The ambition here is to consolidate an area stretching from Shanghai to Nanjing, 300 kilometers to the west, and Taizhou, 375 kilometers to the south, into a single urban colossus consisting of 16 cities and more than 80 million people.
There is a master plan to China’s rampant city building movement: 50 to 150 million-plus person conglomerations of megacities covering the country in a vast web of urbanization.
Shanghai is at the heart of the emerging 80 million person Yangtze River Delta megaregion.
A megaregion isn’t just a fancy term for unchecked sprawl. It is a development strategy that will strategically cluster cities into economic zones by connecting them infrastructurally, economically, and, perhaps eventually, politically.
Starting in the early 1980s, a mostly rural China sought to fundamentally restructure the country and society by giving cities much more prominence and authority. Control of prefectures began being handed over to municipalities and a fourth provincial-level city was created out of Chongqing. Since then, over 40,000 square kilometers of rural land was re-designated as urban, hundreds of new cities were established, 10 cities accumulated populations of over 10 million people and nearly 150 attracted more than a million residents, as China’s urbanization rate jumped from 21% to 56%.
Many of China’s cities soon began bursting at the seams, so to speak, swallowing up surrounding rural areas and sprawling to the boundaries of neighboring cities. Megaregions are a way to better structure and control these rapidly expanding urban spheres.
China’s megaregion initiative is more of an administrative strategy than anything else. The purpose is to view clusters of large cities as single urban organisms, and develop ways that they can be better planned, administered and economically developed. This creates a dynamic where business, industry and population can be more strategically distributed, people and goods can be moved more efficiently, and the catalysts for economic growth can be bolstered with additional resources.
Many of the wealthiest cities in China are accounted for within the Yangtze River Delta megaregion. Though covering just 1% of China’s urban land area and containing just 6% of the country’s population, this region generates upwards of 20% of national GDP. Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou routinely top China’s per-capita richest city lists, Nanjing and Hangzhou are economically booming provincial capitals, and Shanghai is the undisputed financial center of China.
The nervous system of these megacity clusters are the new and enhanced transportation networks which run through them. Newly built high-speed rail lines, new and improved road networks, expanded metro and light rail systems are physically connecting these once separate cities into contiguous urban zones. China built a 19,000 kilometer high-speed rail network, constructed 26 subway systems, paved more than 60,000 kilometers of new highways, and commissioned nearly a hundred new airports in a little over a decade. This supercharged and ever-growing network weaves the national, regional and local transportation systems together and essentially provides the framework that holds megaregions together.
Over 120 pairs of high-speed trains run between Shanghai and Nanjing each day, departing every 5–15 minutes. The G class trains can traverse this 300 kilometer expanse in an hour and a half. When we look at the fact that the average one-way commute of a resident of Shanghai-proper is 47 minutes, this regional rail line effectively turns intermediary cities like Suzhou and Wuxi into giant Shanghai suburbs, enabling a person to live in one city and easily work or shop in another.
The train I was riding in didn’t even get up to full speed before slowing down for its first stop at Kunshan. There was no visible gap between Shanghai’s industrial suburbs and this factory town which is dominated by Taiwanese manufacturers. Beyond Kunshan, small plots of farmland dotted the landscape, but it was clear that they were being picked off and developed fast. At regular intervals a cluster of factories, a housing complex or a small urbanized area would pop up, fragmenting the ancient agricultural matrix into myriad separate pieces. The open spaces between Shanghai, Kunshan, Jiangyin, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang and Nanjing are being filled in fast with the telltale signs of urbanization; the only way that I could tell I was leaving one city and entering another was that the train would sometimes stop and a voice through the intercom told me that I was somewhere else.
In addition to the cities of the Yangtze River Delta being drawn together, Beijing, Tianjin and some of the cities around the Bohai Bay are being combined into the 150 million person “Jing-Jin-Ji” economic zone, the cities of the Pearl River Delta are joining into an 80 million person conglomeration, the Wuhan megaregion is expected to have over 60 million people, and the Central Plains urban cluster 40 million. In all, around a dozen megaregions are being formed across China, which span from the eastern seaboard to Chengdu in the west.
However, these already large cities transforming into megaregions doesn’t mean that the entire expanse within their boundaries is going to appear city-like. We are not going to see landscapes of boulevards, high-rises and shopping malls stretching contiguously over 55,000 square kilometers. No, there will still be relatively large amounts of countryside within the bounds of China’s megaregions, as is par for urban China. 30% of Shanghai’s 7,000 square kilometers, for example, is cropland. China’s cities are not really as big as they seem, as I previously covered on Forbes.com:
The first wave of urbanization in China saw the rise of big eastern cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. The second wave saw inland provincial capitals like Wuhan, Changsha, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’an, and Zhengzhou grow into economic powerhouses. The third wave will see these existing urban centers better coordinated, interconnected, and ultimately enhanced.
As China roles towards 2030 — that fateful year when the country is expected to have over a billion city dwellers — the future of the country will be shaped by these megacity clusters. When we look at the new map of China we will no longer see large cities functioning as independent urban entities but amalgamations of interconnected economic zones which will ideally bolster the power of each part with the clout of the whole. Envision cities inside of cities, spiderwebs inside of spiderwebs of urbanization.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshe...illion-person-urban-megaregions/#7b1189d51cef
Wade Shepard
Oct 6, 2016 @ 01:24 PM
The high-speed train began rolling away from the platform at Shanghai’s Hongqiao station and I was shot down the spine of what is rapidly becoming the Yangtze River Delta megaregion. The ambition here is to consolidate an area stretching from Shanghai to Nanjing, 300 kilometers to the west, and Taizhou, 375 kilometers to the south, into a single urban colossus consisting of 16 cities and more than 80 million people.
There is a master plan to China’s rampant city building movement: 50 to 150 million-plus person conglomerations of megacities covering the country in a vast web of urbanization.
Shanghai is at the heart of the emerging 80 million person Yangtze River Delta megaregion.
A megaregion isn’t just a fancy term for unchecked sprawl. It is a development strategy that will strategically cluster cities into economic zones by connecting them infrastructurally, economically, and, perhaps eventually, politically.
“The concept is broader than a metropolitan area, which consists of an urban area centering on a major city,” wrote Keiichiro Oizumi of the Center for Pacific Studies.
Starting in the early 1980s, a mostly rural China sought to fundamentally restructure the country and society by giving cities much more prominence and authority. Control of prefectures began being handed over to municipalities and a fourth provincial-level city was created out of Chongqing. Since then, over 40,000 square kilometers of rural land was re-designated as urban, hundreds of new cities were established, 10 cities accumulated populations of over 10 million people and nearly 150 attracted more than a million residents, as China’s urbanization rate jumped from 21% to 56%.
Many of China’s cities soon began bursting at the seams, so to speak, swallowing up surrounding rural areas and sprawling to the boundaries of neighboring cities. Megaregions are a way to better structure and control these rapidly expanding urban spheres.
China’s megaregion initiative is more of an administrative strategy than anything else. The purpose is to view clusters of large cities as single urban organisms, and develop ways that they can be better planned, administered and economically developed. This creates a dynamic where business, industry and population can be more strategically distributed, people and goods can be moved more efficiently, and the catalysts for economic growth can be bolstered with additional resources.
Many of the wealthiest cities in China are accounted for within the Yangtze River Delta megaregion. Though covering just 1% of China’s urban land area and containing just 6% of the country’s population, this region generates upwards of 20% of national GDP. Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou routinely top China’s per-capita richest city lists, Nanjing and Hangzhou are economically booming provincial capitals, and Shanghai is the undisputed financial center of China.
The nervous system of these megacity clusters are the new and enhanced transportation networks which run through them. Newly built high-speed rail lines, new and improved road networks, expanded metro and light rail systems are physically connecting these once separate cities into contiguous urban zones. China built a 19,000 kilometer high-speed rail network, constructed 26 subway systems, paved more than 60,000 kilometers of new highways, and commissioned nearly a hundred new airports in a little over a decade. This supercharged and ever-growing network weaves the national, regional and local transportation systems together and essentially provides the framework that holds megaregions together.
Over 120 pairs of high-speed trains run between Shanghai and Nanjing each day, departing every 5–15 minutes. The G class trains can traverse this 300 kilometer expanse in an hour and a half. When we look at the fact that the average one-way commute of a resident of Shanghai-proper is 47 minutes, this regional rail line effectively turns intermediary cities like Suzhou and Wuxi into giant Shanghai suburbs, enabling a person to live in one city and easily work or shop in another.
The train I was riding in didn’t even get up to full speed before slowing down for its first stop at Kunshan. There was no visible gap between Shanghai’s industrial suburbs and this factory town which is dominated by Taiwanese manufacturers. Beyond Kunshan, small plots of farmland dotted the landscape, but it was clear that they were being picked off and developed fast. At regular intervals a cluster of factories, a housing complex or a small urbanized area would pop up, fragmenting the ancient agricultural matrix into myriad separate pieces. The open spaces between Shanghai, Kunshan, Jiangyin, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang and Nanjing are being filled in fast with the telltale signs of urbanization; the only way that I could tell I was leaving one city and entering another was that the train would sometimes stop and a voice through the intercom told me that I was somewhere else.
“The farm land that is left over is crisscrossed; it’s fragmented now with smaller pieces between infrastructure. There is a kind of gap between the urban areas and what was once countryside,” explained Harry den Hartog, the author of Shanghai New Towns.
In addition to the cities of the Yangtze River Delta being drawn together, Beijing, Tianjin and some of the cities around the Bohai Bay are being combined into the 150 million person “Jing-Jin-Ji” economic zone, the cities of the Pearl River Delta are joining into an 80 million person conglomeration, the Wuhan megaregion is expected to have over 60 million people, and the Central Plains urban cluster 40 million. In all, around a dozen megaregions are being formed across China, which span from the eastern seaboard to Chengdu in the west.
However, these already large cities transforming into megaregions doesn’t mean that the entire expanse within their boundaries is going to appear city-like. We are not going to see landscapes of boulevards, high-rises and shopping malls stretching contiguously over 55,000 square kilometers. No, there will still be relatively large amounts of countryside within the bounds of China’s megaregions, as is par for urban China. 30% of Shanghai’s 7,000 square kilometers, for example, is cropland. China’s cities are not really as big as they seem, as I previously covered on Forbes.com:
"It seems like a given that we understand what a city is. Of course, cities are urbanized areas of concrete and steel, tall buildings, a high density of houses and people, and streets full of shops, pedestrians, bicycles and cars. However, in China it’s a little different. “City” is an administrative term, and basically just indicates an expanse of land which falls under the authority of a municipal level of government."
The first wave of urbanization in China saw the rise of big eastern cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. The second wave saw inland provincial capitals like Wuhan, Changsha, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’an, and Zhengzhou grow into economic powerhouses. The third wave will see these existing urban centers better coordinated, interconnected, and ultimately enhanced.
As China roles towards 2030 — that fateful year when the country is expected to have over a billion city dwellers — the future of the country will be shaped by these megacity clusters. When we look at the new map of China we will no longer see large cities functioning as independent urban entities but amalgamations of interconnected economic zones which will ideally bolster the power of each part with the clout of the whole. Envision cities inside of cities, spiderwebs inside of spiderwebs of urbanization.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshe...illion-person-urban-megaregions/#7b1189d51cef
