Cures for China’s Urban Syndromes

It’s always a controversial topic whether we shall focus on the development of big cities or that of small-and-medium towns (SMTs)? Those favoring the former have always emphasized economies of scale, while the opponents on the contrary emphasize the urban syndromes of traffic jams, environmental deterioration and acute housing shortage etc.

Professor Lu Ming has demonstrated the importance of big cities in contemporary China. But in the official formal documents, the development of big cities has always been limited. For example, in the “12th Five-Year” Plan, though supporting active promotion of urbanization, it also puts forward that the urban syndromes need to be managed and prevented, and the given scheme is to reasonably determine the boundary for urban development, regulate construction of new towns and districts, increase the population density for built-up areas, adjust and optimize construction land, and prevent the overexpansion of super cities.

The urban syndromes need to be manages, and small, medium and large cities shall also develop in a harmonious way. But what a size of cities may be regarded as “reasonable”? For super cities, to what extent expansion of areas may be regarded as “excessive”? Here there is no substantial judgment standard: for some cities, 10,000 people are too many, while for other cities, 10 million people are still regarded as too few, how to strike a balance between the two? Under the current system, whether a city may become a super city or a big city is completely determined by the higher level of government.

Is such a government-determined planning meaningful? By now the effect is not of much significance. In May 2001, the State Council officially approved the Urban Total Planning of Shanghai (1999-2020) (hereinafter referred to as the Planning). The development of Shanghai in the past decade has indicated that there exists misjudgment for the population issue in the Planning.

According to the Planning, the total population of Shanghai in 2020 should be controlled within about 20 million, but the permanent population in the whole city at the end of 2011 reached 23.4746 million, therefore various public service facilities including transportation means were in an extremely tense situation.

Such a case that the Planning can’t catch up the changes not only appears in Shanghai, but also appears in almost all cities—especially the cities with most economic potentials. Therefore we necessarily need return to the most fundamental problem. If the administrative planning is useless, how should a city choose its roadmap of development?

In fact it’s not difficult to give an answer, that is, the size of a city is determined by market. If a city may attract 10 million population, then the public services of that municipal government provide should be matched with such a economic scale, and should not be based on the meaningless planning population in a enmeshed way.

At present, the main reason for so many “urban syndromes” in China is the great mismatch between the supply and demand of public services. When a city had a plan to accommodate only 1 million people, however, it in fact has attracted 3 million due to economic need, and only provided public services based on the scale of 1 million, how can that city not get illed?

In order to solve the urban syndromes, firstly we should know where the syndromes come from. In China nowadays, the plan of city development is heavily determined by the government and seriously precludes the influence of market, and thereby leading to the urban syndromes of traffic jams, environmental deterioration and acute housing shortage.

Therefore, the attention should not be paid on constraining the development of big cities, but on determining the scale of a city, and therefore, the size of public services, in a market-driven way. Otherwise, urban syndromes will become increasingly serious, and not the reverse.

Originally published on No.24 issue of Caijing Magazine | 2012-9-24