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Put people first to give urbanization solid foundation
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URBANIZATION is a hot topic at this year’s session of national legislature and political advisory body. Deputies of the National People’s Congress and members of the People’s Political Consultative Conference are busy mapping out the blueprint for future Chinese cities as the country gears up for a “new type of urbanization.”
But how to steer clear of the past mistakes and wrong practices is just as important as mapping out a blueprint.
At a forum held by the University of Virginia last week, experts have weighed in on the current problems and future challenges confronting China’s urbanization process. Urban planners have to take emerging problems into consideration to respond to a new reality on the ground, said Wu Jiang, vice president of Tongji University in Shanghai.
Wu said that China’s urban planning requires adjustment on the score of land use. Despite China’s large land mass, the average land occupation rate is one of the lowest in the world, said Wu. The biggest issue now is how to render land use more efficient as land supply is increasingly limited, he noted. “Everybody says Shanghai is a densely populated city, but in some of its satellite towns land is not always efficiently used,” Wu said.
Land use also needs to be improved in China’s hinterland.
Since 2003, central government has gravitated toward the hinterland in terms of land policies, which is good for China’s balanced growth. But, despite the increase in land use quotas and supposedly better economic prospects, Lu Ming, professor of economics at Fundan University, found that many people still flock to coastal regions in droves.
Which means some new towns and industrial parks that spring up in central and western China do not necessarily have good buisness plans and therefore are in danger of languishing empty and becoming ghost towns — some already are — if they cannot attract enough inhabitants or businesses.
Some of these new towns and industrial parks are unlikely to yield handsome returns to finance construction costs. Their attraction to investors is limited, unless they solve the problems of high logistics costs and labor shortage.
Affordable rentals
China’s urbanization need to be more people-oriented, said noted economist Zhou Lin, dean of Antai College of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. And making people the priority in urbanization can be achieved through the development of a proper property rental market.
Right now housing units in big cities like Shanghai are priced out of the reach of a lot of young talent, forcing them to leave for less expensive areas to live or start their business. This has contributed to a loss of talent, and with that a “potential loss of startup companies.”
Zhou said high property prices lead to the so-called “ants” problem — subletting — where a property is divided into many small living spaces, with potential security risks, fire hazards and hygiene problems.
He stressed that Shanghai needs to think how to make more reasonably priced housing units available to accommodate young start-up entrepreneurs.
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