Growing by Groups and Bounds
Coordinated regional development on the menu as urbanization reaches new stage
As China’s urbanization process enters a new stage, more and more people will come to work and live in cities, thereby triggering a new challenge—how should cities develop and how should different cities relate to one another?
There is a change in China’s urbanization process with cities developing in an increasingly coordinated way. For instance, under the coordinated development strategy initiated by the Central Government, the Beijing-tianjin-hebei region in north China has changed the model of fragmented development.
In his government work report delivered on
March 5, Premier Li Keqiang said the government will promote coordinated development across regions and improve the quality of new urbanization. City clusters will be nurtured through the development of leading cities.
According to Yang Kaizhong, Vice President of the Beijing- based Capital University of Economics and Business and Chairman of the Regional Science Association of China, leading cities mean megacities and some large cities that can play a leading role within a region. With their advantages, leading cities can highly integrate with adjacent areas and form a metropolitan area.
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) defines a metropolitan area as an urban spatial form within one hour’s commuting circle centered on a certain metropolis within a city cluster. To develop metropolitan areas, the government must establish uniform markets and realize the integration of infrastructure and public services across different administrative regions.
City clusters are regional agglomerates of two or more metropolitan areas.
City cluster plans
In the four decades since the policy of reform and opening up was adopted,