MCLC: mega-cities

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: mega-cities
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Source: Quartz (5/5/14):
http://qz.com/201012/chinas-mega-cities-are-combining-into-even-larger-mega
-regions-and-theyre-doing-it-all-wrong/

China’s mega-cities are combining into mega-regions, and they’re doing it
all wrong
By Richard Macauley

You may never have heard of the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing,
but by some measures it is one of the largest and fastest-growing cities
in the world, with an official population of 29 million—about the same as
Saudi Arabia—and unofficial population of 32 million or more.

The city center of Chongqing boasts a mere 9 million people, but dozens of
satellite districts such as Fuling (population 1 million) and Wanzhou (1.6
million) are each major cities in their own right. In total, Chongqing
covers an area the size of Austria, and it’s about to become part of a
mega-region that is even larger, part of move in China to create the
biggest urban municipalities on Earth.

Chongqing, for example, will be part of the even larger Chuanyu
mega-region, which also includes the major city of Chengdu and 13 cities
from Sichuan province. The Capital Economic Zone encompasses Beijing and
Tianjin; the Pearl River Delta region includes Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and
Hong Kong; and the Yangtze River Delta region is centered around Shanghai.

China isn’t alone in the development of mega-regions—greater Tokyo and the
Washington, DC-Boston corridor also have similarly huge populations and
geographies—but China’s ongoing urbanization and rapid growth is making it
something of a laboratory for urban planning on a massive scale. The
theoretical appeal of ever-larger municipal areas is that they will create
efficiencies in the delivery of services like transport and sanitation,
while knitting together a thriving urban ecosystem.

The trouble is that China’s mega-cities and mega-regions aren’t being
built with an eye toward maximizing the advantages and minimizing the
downsides of creating these massive metropolises. Most importantly, the
mega-regions are being built around a small number of city centers, many
of which are surrounded by concentric circles of commuters and bedroom
communities that makes traffic hellish and pollution even worse.

“Among the 10 developed and emerging mega-regions in China, only a limited
number have exhibited a significant level of polycentricity,” concluded a
report by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
<https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/2226_1558_Yang_WP13JY1.pdf> (pdf), a
US think tank. “Around half of the 10 mega-regions are either dominated by
a single major center, or by a limited number of major centers which are
located closely to one another.”

This is a problem because it ultimately means everyone will want to work
in close proximity to the city centers, which causes sky-high property
prices and transportation headaches. Size doesn’t always have to be a
negative, though.

“Mega-cities are a necessary step in the development of urban areas,” Eric
Marcuson, a Chongqing-based urban planner at Aecom, told Quartz. “A city
is just an urban area with one center, but to increase growth and
productivity cities eventually need to encompass more, complimentary
centers.”

Unfortunately it doesn’t appear that China is following the advice of
urban planners like Marcuson. Take Beijing, a city of around 20 million
residents with just one main center for commerce and productivity. It is
surrounded by concentric ring roads that create heavy traffic, and even
its very good subway system is hugely overcrowded. Nevertheless, the
Chinese government seems determined to double-down on Beijing, combining
it with the city of  Tianjin and parts of Hebei province into one huge
megalopolis. But as Quartz has reported, While Hebei isn’t likely to
attract workers away from Beijing, the other cities in the proposed
“Jing-Jin-Ji” region are mostly suburbs, with no real urban centers of
their own—precisely the opposite to what the specialists advise.