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Has China Reached Peak Urbanization?
- smallnamespace 10y agoEasy answer: no. The US is 81% urbanized. And here's a comparative chart of PPP per capita vs urbanization: https://theaspiringeconomist.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/urbanisation-and-income-per-capita-in-asian-countries/ https://theaspiringeconomist.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/urbani... China's per-capita PPP is about 12-13k, so doing the obvious extrapolation gets you a 65-70% urbanization rate (as opposed to the article's claim that a 60% target is 'too high').
- ChuckMcM 10y agoBeat me to it :-) I am curious how much better cities have to become in order to achieve 70+% urbanization. Certainly massive gridlock and smog isn't going to attract people.
- geogra4 10y agoNarrow streets :) http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130330.php#.V47PTcspDqA http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130330.php#.V47PTc...
- beefsack 10y agoIt's a fun read and I always flick through it every time it gets posted, but I feel like it's swimming in anecdotes so I take it with a grain of salt.
- uola 10y agoOf course those streets are wide by (some) Chinese standards where they build entire blocks with 10+ story buildings meters apart.
- mikeash 10y agoThe Chinese cities I've visited (Beijing mostly, a little bit in Qingdao, Shanghai, and Suzhou) are full of gigantic streets. It's amazingly unfriendly for pedestrians, considering how many there are. Six lane roads are quite common, and the tight little streets shown in that article are reserved for the rare places which have avoided redevelopment due to tourist appeal or whatever. Between the huge streets and the crazy drivers, I really don't enjoy walking around. Typical American cities are much better in that respect, although many fewer Americans take advantage.
- crdb 10y agoInteresting, I have the opposite experience. I much prefer walking in streets designed by central planners to accommodate modern crowds (Singapore, central Beijing, central Chengdu...) than twisty narrow streets there for historical reasons (Hong Kong, especially the stretch from Central to Sheung Wan, especially on weekends; but also the "preserved" hutongs in Beijing). The reason is crowds: try walking through Sheung Wan, or Singapore's preserved shophouse streets in Chinatown, on a Sunday afternoon and see what average speed you achieve... And you can also spot crazy drivers better in a large, wide-roaded grid than round the corner of a hutong where you have to spot the direction of the rapidly approaching noise so you know which side to jump. Not to mention: the sun can actually shine if the roads are wide, in tight streets you are in the dark even at lunchtime. Smog is a problem which can be solved, as much of Europe and the US have demonstrated. China will eventually move industry out of the cities and drive with catalytic converters. Where tight streets might win is when they are coupled with a pedestrian area. "No cars" is still the most pleasant walking experience.
- mikeash 10y agoSome "preserved street" everybody visits is going to suck, sure. For something like that, more space is better. But if you go to one that isn't just a tourist attraction, they're very nice. For example, there's one I've been to a couple of times, I think it's Nanluogu, where the main street is unbelievably crowded but if you just hang a left or right, suddenly everything becomes fairly quiet and calm.
- DamnYuppie 10y agoSo far it doesn't seem to be deterring them too much either...
- Hydraulix989 10y agoChina's cavalier attitude towards smog and environmental pollution is destroying the planet. I could never live there because you can't even see 50 feet in front of you in Shanghai; I've heard Beijing is much worse, but I wouldn't dare ever visit because of health reasons. Here's a photo outside of my hotel during my stay in Shanghai: http://imgur.com/xW9SoZP.jpg http://imgur.com/xW9SoZP.jpg Surely, people don't want to migrate to urban areas in part because of the smog.
- omio 10y agoThose buildings look French.
- mikeash 10y agoChunks of Shanghai were owned by European powers for about a hundred years. The influence persists, as do many buildings (although the ones in this picture surely aren't from that time).
- zhemao 10y agoThere was a sizable French Concession in Shanghai's International Settlement and its architecture style is widely emulated. My relatives used to own an old school row house (shikumen) in the former French Concession, but sold it off for new development. Funnily enough, that neighborhood has been turned into an upscale shopping and entertainment district, and many of the new shops are built in a shikumen style.
- Hydraulix989 10y agoCorrect, my photo was taken in the French Concession.
- chishaku 10y ago> China's cavalier attitude ... and the cavalier attitude of those buying China's exports. "A significant portion of Chinese emissions of air pollutants in recent years has resulted from the manufacture of goods intended for export, new research by a team of Chinese and international scholars found, reflecting the increasingly global nature of China’s environmental crisis." "The U.S., as a major buyer of Chinese-made goods, has a stake in China curbing its emissions. For each of the pollutants examined—including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and black carbon—about 21% of export-related emissions in the year 2006 were tied to Chinese exports to the U.S, the researchers found." “If all the emissions were reallocated according to where goods are consumed…emissions of many of China’s trade partners would be much higher,” they wrote. In the case of the U.S., for example, emissions of the four pollutants analyzed would have been 6-19% higher in 2006 “if the emissions embodied in its trade with China were included.” http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/01/21/u-s-exports-its-factories-and-pollution-to-china/ http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/01/21/u-s-exports-it...
- melling 10y agoIsn't China doing a better job with mass transit? Look at how much the Shanghai metro has grown, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro#/media/File%3ASHM_evolution_mid.gif https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro#/media/File%3...
- prewett 10y agoBetter with respect to whom? (Comparative adjectives require something to compare) Since Shanghai has somewhere around 24 million people [1] and is ranked 10th in population density [2] in the world, I would expect it to have a "better" system regardless of who you compare it with. By contrast, the first US city in the top 125 cities is San Francisco at 104th, and a population density 5 times smaller than Shanghai. However, "better" is more than just how big the system is. Beijing has a huge subway system, but using it to go across the city takes an hour (e.g. from Sihui to Zhongguancun). In fact, it seems like every mode of transport in Beijing travels at the speed of a bike. A cab gets stuck on the ring roads; the bus requires waiting and has lots of stops plus traffic lights; the subway requires a walk to/from the station, plus waiting, plus a likely 5 min transfer walk, plus waiting, not to mention that you'll be standing up that whole time, and squished if during rush hour. (On the plus side, when I was there it was practically free at 33 cents a ride.) Unfortunately, biking in Beijing is like swimming with sharks (cars) in muddy waters (air). So... Beijing has a huge system, but is it "better"? Well, yes and no... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai [2] http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-...
- epynonymous 10y agosorry, didn't rtfa (bloomberg and wordpress blocked in china), but what constitutes urbanized? from what i understand, most people in the us live in suburbs, i wouldn't call that urbanized living, i would call new york city, sf, chicago as urbanized, maybe count some of the burrows, but that can't equal 81%.
- vlehto 10y agoWhat if it's other way round? People move to cities because they can afford to. In my country there is calculation that some 80% of all wealth is bound to infrastructure. So leaving behind one infra and building another would be the most expensive thing a family could ever do. Middle class of poor country would stay in inherited house.
- Noseshine 10y agoWe can see in many poor countries that a major driver of moving people to urban centers is the opposite: They can't afford not moving. This results in the many huge and still growing slum areas in and around many major cities. I also refer to the many headlines about Indian farmers committing suicide, although of course one has to be careful with generalizations.
- paradite 10y ago> A good step would be a program to deliver clean water to the hundreds of millions of Chinese who currently lack it. Fair point. > Another would be a national plan to control urban floods, like those that have afflicted central and southern China in recent weeks. Uhm... This is not a simple task. When dealing with natural disasters, you can only do so much to control it, and countries rather focus on the mitigation of the effects. You cannot just "control floods" in China or "control hurricane" in the US context. > Finally, the government needs to reform the antiquated "hukou" permit system that prevents rural migrants from easily acquiring the rights and services that their urban counterparts are entitled to. It is already happening. Give it a few years.
- Animats 10y agoChina is trying hard to spread out its urbanized population to more cities. Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong/Shenzhen/Guangzhou/Dongguan are just too crowded. But it's not a "back to the land" movement; it's about moving more people and industries to other cities, some of them newly built. Of course, most people want to be in the big cities because that's where the money and good jobs are.
- twblalock 10y agoIt's more about moving people from the countryside, who have never lived in cities, into cities. It is not so much about moving people from some cities to other cities. Incidentally, this is the largest and most successful anti-poverty program ever implemented. People whose families have lived in terrible generational poverty, in the same village for thousands of years, in some cases since before the invention of writing, are now able to buy iPhones.
- formula_ninguna 10y agoAnd unable to become free again: bank credits, cars, ads, junk food, pollution, spying, different sorts of control, expensive medicine which they're forced to use because of pollution and junk food, stress, telling them how to live from mass media.
- varjag 10y agoFree again? You call living in shit and mud for all of your (short) life, not by the choice, a freedom? Sure you skip invasive ads and pollution. But your diet is still abysmal, just try living on rice and soy beans for a few months. The healthcare is poorly accessible, while party control, spying, draft etc are just as omnipresent as everywhere throughout China.
- twblalock 10y agoThey were not free before in any meaningful sense, because they lacked agency in every decision about their lives. Poverty trapped them in the same place, in the same occupation, for their entire lives. Despite what you see as the drawbacks of modern life, the people who have moved to the cities are far, far better off, and freer, than before.
- emodendroket 10y agoConsidering the efforts China takes to prevent people from moving into cities from the countryside I'd say they've not reached any sort of natural bound.