Dean Forbes
 


CHINA’S CITIES: THE LAST 25 YEARS

Conference on
Developing Sustainable Societies: Challenges and Perspectives
Flinders University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Adelaide 22-23rd March 2011

Professor Dean Forbes
Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International & Communities)
Flinders University



INTRODUCTION 

It is an honour to be invited to speak at this event, and pleasing to see such a large number of scholars from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Adelaide.   

Flinders and CASS first signed a collaborative agreement in March 2004, and renewed it in 2009. I was a visitor to CASS in 1995, supported by the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and CASS.  I have also collaborated with CASS’s sister body the Chinese Academy of Science.  Two of the books that I have been involved in on China – China’s Spatial Economy (1990), and China’s New Spatial Economy (1997) – were both done in cooperation with staff from the Chinese Academy of Science.  Andrew Watson, who will speak in this forum tomorrow, was also a contributor to China’s New Spatial Economy.

I chose an ambitious title for this presentation – China’s Cities: the last 25 years. It’s a big topic for a 20 minute talk, so I will stick to a few key themes.  China’s urbanisation has accelerated over the last few decades.  26% of the population lived in cities in 1990, but this had increased to 47% in 2010 (UN-Habitat 2010 p254).  636 million people, or almost one in five of the world’s total urban residents (18%), now live in a Chinese town or city (UN-Habitat 2010 p253).  Anyone with an interest in contemporary cities, or what cities might be like in the future, would be well advised to understand China’s urban revolution.  My focus will be on the challenges of reconciling economic growth, liveability and sustainability in large Chinese cities.

PLANNING ASIAN CITIES

Stephen Hamnett at the University of South Australia and I last month finished editing a book entitled Planning Asian Cities: Risks and Resilience.  It should be available in July.  To my amazement! I remember when it used to take a year or 18 months from completion of editing to publication.  It will be published in Routledge’s Planning, History and Environment Series, and if you re-mortgage your house you could probably afford to buy a copy (£65.00).

Planning Asian Cities includes chapters on Beijing (Gu Chaolin, Tsinghua University and Ian Cook, Liverpool John Moores University), Shanghai (Susan Walcott, University of North Carolina), and Hong Kong (Anthony Yeh, University of Hong Kong).  

We asked authors to identify the major challenges and risks facing the cities, and actions to address these risks.  The challenges we were particularly interested in were connected to:
•    growth rates and size, 
•    strategic economic positioning
•    the urban environment and sustainability

Each of the three Chinese cities are very large by world standards.  Two are megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants. Beijing has 12.4 million, and Shanghai 16.6 million. Hong Kong has a modest 7.1 million.

Each is recognized as a world city. Beijing’s prominence is as a seat of government.  Shanghai and Hong Kong depend on their economic functions, increasingly built around a range of producer services. Shanghai and Hong Kong both lay claim to be the dragon’s head, Shanghai because of its location in the Yangtze River Delta and Hong Kong its position in the Pearl River Delta, both major concentrations of economic activity.

On the Mastercard World Centers of Commerce ranking Hong Kong is 6th, Shanghai 24th and Beijing 57th. It was once the case that world city status grew organically as a result of the strength of the nation’s economy.  London, New York and Tokyo were the dominant world cities.  

Cities now adopt explicit strategies to strengthen their services economy and enhance their global reputation.  This means, for instance, building transport infrastructure, such as major airports, with fast road and rail connections to the city centre.  The Norman Foster designed Hong Kong International Airport is ranked in 3rd place by Skytrack’ in their list of Top 10 airports, and Beijing Capital Airport is ranked 8th.  While not in the list, the new Pudong International Airport, and the re-built Hong Qiao International Airport are designed to facilitate Shanghai’s growth as a global service economy.

Investments have also sought to build the symbolic capital of these cities.  The 2008 Beijing Olympics is one example, the Shanghai World Expo 2010 is another.  Both were undertaken with investment in infrastructure at a scale that very few countries could match, except, possibly, an oil-rich Gulf state.  Hong Kong’s development of the waterfront of the West Kowloon Cultural District is representative of the city’s desire to enhance its reputation as a cultural and entertainment centre.  It is progressing at a glacial pace, compared with the Shanghai and Beijing initiatives.  

The development of these world city features has brought about significant changes, to the shape of China’s cities.  The strategies have encouraged growth in economic terms, and in population.  Consequently cities attract foreign investment and a disproportionate share of infrastructure investment (Woetzel et al 2009 p 27).  

Incomes are high.  Hong Kong’s per capita GDP is $US29,991, Shanghai $US11,464 and Beijing $US10,137.   This contrasts strikingly with the per capita GDP of China as a whole of around $4,300, or with comparable cities such as Mumbai ($US2,184) and Jakarta ($US7,636).

Many people want to live in Shanghai, or Beijing or Hong Kong.  New university graduates want to move to these cities because it is where the exciting jobs and affluent lifestyles are concentrated. As a result, Shanghai permits residency only to those with sufficient skills.  Some 28% of the city’s labour force has a college education (Woetzel et al 2009 p 26).

To cope with the influx of new knowledge workers and to strengthen the services economy these cities have focused on the building of infrastructure in the CBD’s.  

This has pushed people into medium and high-density developments in suburban areas and in satellite cities, creating new poly nucleated urban forms.  During a recent visit I was driven around Shanghai’s north-eastern edge on a journey from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology to Pudong Airport. I was astounded by the sight of the endless blocks of high-rise housing, and couldn’t help but wonder how residents adapt to what surely must be an entirely new lifestyle. 

TIANJIN, THE LAST 25 YEARS

Before I go any further, let me step back in time, to February 1986.  25 years ago.  

David Wilmoth, from the NSW Department of Environment and Planning, and I landed at Beijing Airport. Snow covered the ground, and there was light fog. We declared the two watermelons we were carrying and the customs officers were satisfied they posed no harm to China.  A car picked us up and drove down the narrow road to the city.  The road was bordered on each side by trees, with the bottom metre of the trunk painted white.  After a brief stop in Beijing to hand over the watermelons we headed for Tianjin as guests of the Tianjin Scientific and Technical Exchange Centre with Foreign Countries (TSTEC). 

The weather was bitterly cold, and the city appeared to be struggling.  Tianjin had a population in 1986 of 3.4 million, and the Urban Planning Bureau had capped the population at around 3.8 million in 2000.  China’s urban policy focused on the growth of the medium-sized cities and small towns.

It was an industrial city specialising in machine building, chemicals and textiles.  Tianjin was located in harsh environment that was windy, sinking due to the loss of groundwater, and lacking sufficient water.  It was still recovering from the impact of the Tangshan earthquake 10 years earlier, which killed 30,000 Tianjin residents and destroyed significant parts of the city.  Along with the recent earthquake and tsunami in eastern Japan, they are reminders of the risks facing these Pacific rim cities.

However, Tianjin had the good fortune of being nominated in 1984 as one of the 14 coastal cities chosen to lead China’s new ‘open-door’ strategy.  The list was shortened to four the following year, but Tianjin was one of them (the others were Shanghai, Guangzhou and Dalian).  The city was beginning to build upon its industrial past and re-invent itself as a science and technology city, focused on the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA), which had been commenced in 1984. 

Moving forward to the present the city is much larger and it is no longer a struggling industrial city.  Tianjin’s population in 2010 is 7.9 million.  It has a vibrant commercial centre and 20 five star hotels.  The cities greening strategies, commenced in the 1980s, have been effective, particularly along the banks of the Haihe.

The Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Express Railway connects the two cities at 350 km/hour in just 30 minutes.  And the Tianjin Binhai International Airport is a major domestic air terminal that also services international flights. In 1986 there were just three incoming flights a day. 

It has strong universities, such as Nankai University and its neighbour, Tianjin University, and the Tianjin Medical University.  Flinders staff have connections with all three, including two very substantial, long-standing Masters programs with Nankai University.  Between them the two programs have 1,700 graduates spread throughout China, and another 435 will graduate in October.

Tianjin has been moving its smoke-stack industries to the Binhai New Area, a merger of three former coastal districts, including the TEDA region, in the east of the municipality on the Bohai Gulf.  Thus far 285 Fortune 500 companies have invested in the area.  This includes an assembly plant for the Airbus A320.  

The Sino-Singaporean Tianjin Eco-city is also located close to the centre of the Binhai New Area. The 30 km2 development should be fully developed within the next 10-15 years, and is aiming at a population of 350,000.  Another Italian designed eco-city is intended for Tangshan, adjacent to Tianjin.

Binhai is intending to leverage the economies of agglomeration and scale in the new location to reduce the environmental footprint of industry. The region has long suffered from water shortages, pushing the Tianjin government to invest in a major desalination and power plant in 2005.  A second stage expansion has been underway since 2010.  The idea is to build a cluster of industries and expertise around desalination, leading to the production of fresh water (400,000 tons per day), power and sea salt, as well as waste re-use, and land conservation (Woetzel 2011 p 4).   Adelaide’s new desalination plant will soon commence production.  I suspect we could learn much from Tianjin about their cluster of desalination industries.

CHINA’S CITIES, THE NEXT 25 YEARS

China’s urban population is projected to reach 851 million in 2025, and well over one billion (1,037 million to be precise) in 2050.  It could be a decade or two earlier, according to some projections. Three in every four Chinese will live in a town or city (UN-Habitat 2010; UN 2010).  By 2025, 43 of the world’s 100 largest cities will be in China.  

Five will be mega cities.  Shanghai (20 million), Beijing (15 million), Chonqing (11.1 million), Shenzhen (11.1 million), and Guangzhou (11 million).  Three others will be very close: Tianjin (9.7 million), Wuhan (9.3 million), and Hong Kong (8 million).

There are many challenges confronting China’s large cities but I will confine my thoughts to two broad dimensions essential to building better and sustainable cities in China.  The first is the strategy and planning framework for managing major environmental risks.  The second is how to make the cities better places in which to live and work and help to enhance their resilience. 

Strategy and Planning

The Economist Intelligence Unit (2011) has recently released an Asian Green City Index spanning 22 cities measured against eight key environmental dimensions.  On an overall ranking Hong Kong ranked above average (level 2 out of 5), and the other Chinese cities listed, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Wuhan were rated average (level 3).  Tianjin, unfortunately, was not included.  Across the whole sample, Singapore was the only level 1 city, and Karachi the only ranked at level 5.

The scores on the individual dimensions are summarised in Table 1.  Hong Kong had the better ratings, and Shanghai and Beijing were similar, with the latter a little ahead.  

In the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics the media reported that Beijing had the worst air quality of any city in the world.  Anyone walking on the streets of Beijing when the sand is blowing in from the Gobi Desert would probably agree.  On the Index, Beijing comes out poorly, ranked as below average in air quality. However improvements have been made, particularly in trying to reduce the impact of motor vehicles with measures such as the massive replacement of polluting taxis and buses, and a ‘cash for clunkers’ scheme similar to a proposal put forward then withdrawn by the Gillard government in Australia.  
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Table 1
ASIAN GREEN CITY INDEX: BEIJING, SHANGHAI, HONG KONG
_____________________________________________________________________________________
                                                                       
                                                                                Beijing     Shanghai   Hong Kong
                                Energy & CO2                              4                5               2
                                Transport                                      3                3               2
                                Water                                            2                3               3
                                Air Quality                                     4                3               2
                                Land Use & Buildings                   3                4               1
                                Waste                                           3                3               2
                                Sanitation                                     3                3               2
                                Environmental Governance         3                3                2
_____________________________________________________________________________________
1 Well above average  2 Above average  3 Average  4 Below average  5 Well below average
Source: Economist Intelligence Unit 2011 p 11

In terms of environmental governance, Hong Kong scored 2, and Beijing and Shanghai each 3. China’s large cities have strong governance structures.  The cities and their satellites come under a single authority, and in the case of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chonqing, they have provincial status.  Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region, is in a similar position.  A sound unitary structure means that the execution of environmental policies and strategies is more effective than in cities with fragmented governance structures such as Jakarta and Manila.  More effective also than the fragmented planning arrangements for the major Australian cities, Brisbane excepted.

There are several positive environmental signs for these cities.  The Shanghai World Expo 2010 had a clear urban environmental theme: ‘Better City, Better Life’.  Several major pavilions demonstrated the new technology for reducing the environmental impact of urban living.  It is also apparent that the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau has been strengthened since the 2008 Olympics.  

I believe there is a positive connection between a city’s intentional strategies for enhancing its world city reputation, the importance it gives globally significant cultural events and its readiness to support the adoption of explicit strategies for enhancing the urban environment.

Hong Kong excluded, the weakness is the opportunity for citizen involvement in environmental strategies.  This leads into my next point.

Urban Community and Resilience

China’s large cities are becoming more global, more wealthy and increasingly well managed.   But are they becoming more liveable cities?  On the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2007 liveability index survey of 215 cities worldwide Hong Kong ranked 70th and Shanghai 100th (UN-Habitat 2010 p177).  No Chinese cities are in the 2010 Mercer ranking of the quality of city life in the top 50 cities.  The only ranked Asian cities are Singapore (28), Tokyo (40), Kobe and Yokohama, both equal 41st.  Adelaide, for comparison, was ranked 32nd.

There has been a steady and significant improvement in the liveability of Chinese cities evident to any regular visitor to China, and the cities are moving up the rankings.  However, two questions need to be posed:
1.    Are the new high-rise housing estates characteristic of China’s large cities functioning as desirable, liveable spaces?  
2.    Will these kinds of urban formations increase the resilience of the city and its residents?

The evidence is mixed, at best.  John Friedman (2010 p 149), the eminent urban planner, believes that 

the art of place-making has not informed planners…in the newly industrialising global regions of Asia…Their principle preoccupation has been with the branding of cities and the advanced infrastructure required by global capital.  In the process, millions of ordinary folks have been displaced and their neighbourhoods erased, as speed, movement and power have been valued more than the fragile social infrastructure of place-based communities.

As an example of displacement Friedmann (2010 p 157) cites the destruction of the houses in the hutong, the alleyways of Beijing, displacing up to half a million people between 1998 and 2001.  An acceleration of the process occurred prior to the Beijing Olympics. Residents were resettled in the outer suburbs beyond the fourth ring road.  Neighbourhood formation in the new residential zones is the responsibility of the shequ residents’ committees, of which there are now over 80,000 throughout China.  He describes the process as ‘still undergoing an experimental phase’ (Friedmann 2010 p 160)
 
In addition, there is little or no serious community involvement in urban planning in China, even when it involves issues of day-to-day significance such as the urban environment.  While the shequ committees can contribute to place-making, through neighbourhood development, it would be more effective if that also involved the community and community organisations. The resilience of cities in the face of environmental pressures, or environmental disasters, depends crucially on community organisation and engagement as well as about effective governance structures.

Cities and Sustainability

Let me conclude with a summary of my overall argument.

Urbanisation in China on a grand scale is a recent phenomenon.  Chinese have lived in villages and towns for millennia, and were drawn into communes during the communist era.  Urban policies restricted growth in the large cities, and focused instead on the development of small and medium cities, especially those in strategic locations.

Now there is much greater focus on large cities and ever expanding metropolitan regions.  These areas lead the country’s economic rise and they fuel the fastest growth of incomes.

Sean Chiao (2010), a planner and Vice President of AECOM, a global engineering and urban design firm with offices in Shanghai, believes this is the only viable way in which China to can attain a sustainable pattern of cities.  China has high rural population densities, a scarcity of land and water, and a large and growing urban population.  Mega-cities, he argues, are the most resource efficient and hence the only viable settlement pattern for China in the future.  This is an ambitious proposition.  In large part, it will depend on the social texture of Chinese cities.

As China becomes the location of many of the world’s largest cities it will become a testing ground for new urban strategies and policies.  One of its greatest challenges will be to reconcile its ambitious economic growth goals with its need for cities that are more liveable and more resilient, and hence more sustainable.   


REFERENCES

Chiao, Sean C.S. 2010 ‘Planning China’s megacities’, McKinsey&Company What Matters.
<http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/cities/planning-china-s-megacities>

Economist Intelligence Unit 2011 Asian Green City Index. Assessing the Performance of Asia’s Major Cities, Siemens AG, Munich
<http://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2011/corporate/2011-02-asia/asian-gci-report-e.pdf>

Friedmann, John (2010) ‘Place and place-making in cities: a global perspective’, Planning Theory and Practice, B11(2), pp.149-165.

United Nations (2010) World Urbanization Prospects. The 2009 Revision, New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.

UN-Habitat (2010) The State of Asian Cities 2010/2011. Fukuoka, Japan: United Nations Human Settlements Programme, Fukuoka

UN-Habitat (2009) Planning Sustainable Cities: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009. London: United Nations Human Settlements Programme/Earthscan.

Woetzel, Jonathan et al 2009 Preparing for China’s Urban Billion, McKinsey Global Institute, McKinsey &Company March 2008.
<http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/reports/pdfs/China_Urban_Billion/MGI_Preparing_for_Chinas_Urban_Billion.pdf>

Woetzel, Jonathan 2011 ‘How green are China’s cities?’ McKinsey Quarterly, January 2011
<https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_green_are_Chinas_cities_2734>



CHINA’S CITIES: THE LAST 25 YEARS


Conference on

Developing Sustainable Societies: Challenges and Perspectives

Flinders University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Adelaide 22-23rd March 2011


Professor Dean Forbes

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International & Communities)

Flinders University




INTRODUCTION


It is an honour to be invited to speak at this event, and pleasing to see such a large number of scholars from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Adelaide.  


Flinders and CASS first signed a collaborative agreement in March 2004, and renewed it in 2009. I was a visitor to CASS in 1995, supported by the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and CASS.  I have also collaborated with CASS’s sister body the Chinese Academy of Science.  Two of the books that I have been involved in on China – China’s Spatial Economy (1990), and China’s New Spatial Economy (1997) – were both done in cooperation with staff from the Chinese Academy of Science.  Andrew Watson, who will speak in this forum tomorrow, was also a contributor to China’s New Spatial Economy.


I chose an ambitious title for this presentation – China’s Cities: the last 25 years. It’s a big topic for a 20 minute talk, so I will stick to a few key themes.  China’s urbanisation has accelerated over the last few decades.  26% of the population lived in cities in 1990, but this had increased to 47% in 2010 (UN-Habitat 2010 p254).  636 million people, or almost one in five of the world’s total urban residents (18%), now live in a Chinese town or city (UN-Habitat 2010 p253).  Anyone with an interest in contemporary cities, or what cities might be like in the future, would be well advised to understand China’s urban revolution.  My focus will be on the challenges of reconciling economic growth, liveability and sustainability in large Chinese cities.


PLANNING ASIAN CITIES


Stephen Hamnett at the University of South Australia and I last month finished editing a book entitled Planning Asian Cities: Risks and Resilience.  It should be available in July.  To my amazement! I remember when it used to take a year or 18 months from completion of editing to publication.  It will be published in Routledge’s Planning, History and Environment Series, and if you re-mortgage your house you could probably afford to buy a copy (£65.00).


Planning Asian Cities includes chapters on Beijing (Gu Chaolin, Tsinghua University and Ian Cook, Liverpool John Moores University), Shanghai (Susan Walcott, University of North Carolina), and Hong Kong (Anthony Yeh, University of Hong Kong). 


We asked authors to identify the major challenges and risks facing the cities, and actions to address these risks.  The challenges we were particularly interested in were connected to:

•    growth rates and size,

•    strategic economic positioning

•    the urban environment and sustainability


Each of the three Chinese cities are very large by world standards.  Two are megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants. Beijing has 12.4 million, and Shanghai 16.6 million. Hong Kong has a modest 7.1 million.


Each is recognized as a world city. Beijing’s prominence is as a seat of government.  Shanghai and Hong Kong depend on their economic functions, increasingly built around a range of producer services. Shanghai and Hong Kong both lay claim to be the dragon’s head, Shanghai because of its location in the Yangtze River Delta and Hong Kong its position in the Pearl River Delta, both major concentrations of economic activity.


On the Mastercard World Centers of Commerce ranking Hong Kong is 6th, Shanghai 24th and Beijing 57th. It was once the case that world city status grew organically as a result of the strength of the nation’s economy.  London, New York and Tokyo were the dominant world cities. 


Cities now adopt explicit strategies to strengthen their services economy and enhance their global reputation.  This means, for instance, building transport infrastructure, such as major airports, with fast road and rail connections to the city centre.  The Norman Foster designed Hong Kong International Airport is ranked in 3rd place by Skytrack’ in their list of Top 10 airports, and Beijing Capital Airport is ranked 8th.  While not in the list, the new Pudong International Airport, and the re-built Hong Qiao International Airport are designed to facilitate Shanghai’s growth as a global service economy.


Investments have also sought to build the symbolic capital of these cities.  The 2008 Beijing Olympics is one example, the Shanghai World Expo 2010 is another.  Both were undertaken with investment in infrastructure at a scale that very few countries could match, except, possibly, an oil-rich Gulf state.  Hong Kong’s development of the waterfront of the West Kowloon Cultural District is representative of the city’s desire to enhance its reputation as a cultural and entertainment centre.  It is progressing at a glacial pace, compared with the Shanghai and Beijing initiatives. 


The development of these world city features has brought about significant changes, to the shape of China’s cities.  The strategies have encouraged growth in economic terms, and in population.  Consequently cities attract foreign investment and a disproportionate share of infrastructure investment (Woetzel et al 2009 p 27). 


Incomes are high.  Hong Kong’s per capita GDP is $US29,991, Shanghai $US11,464 and Beijing $US10,137.   This contrasts strikingly with the per capita GDP of China as a whole of around $4,300, or with comparable cities such as Mumbai ($US2,184) and Jakarta ($US7,636).


Many people want to live in Shanghai, or Beijing or Hong Kong.  New university graduates want to move to these cities because it is where the exciting jobs and affluent lifestyles are concentrated. As a result, Shanghai permits residency only to those with sufficient skills.  Some 28% of the city’s labour force has a college education (Woetzel et al 2009 p 26).


To cope with the influx of new knowledge workers and to strengthen the services economy these cities have focused on the building of infrastructure in the CBD’s. 


This has pushed people into medium and high-density developments in suburban areas and in satellite cities, creating new poly nucleated urban forms.  During a recent visit I was driven around Shanghai’s north-eastern edge on a journey from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology to Pudong Airport. I was astounded by the sight of the endless blocks of high-rise housing, and couldn’t help but wonder how residents adapt to what surely must be an entirely new lifestyle.


TIANJIN, THE LAST 25 YEARS


Before I go any further, let me step back in time, to February 1986.  25 years ago. 


David Wilmoth, from the NSW Department of Environment and Planning, and I landed at Beijing Airport. Snow covered the ground, and there was light fog. We declared the two watermelons we were carrying and the customs officers were satisfied they posed no harm to China.  A car picked us up and drove down the narrow road to the city.  The road was bordered on each side by trees, with the bottom metre of the trunk painted white.  After a brief stop in Beijing to hand over the watermelons we headed for Tianjin as guests of the Tianjin Scientific and Technical Exchange Centre with Foreign Countries (TSTEC).


The weather was bitterly cold, and the city appeared to be struggling.  Tianjin had a population in 1986 of 3.4 million, and the Urban Planning Bureau had capped the population at around 3.8 million in 2000.  China’s urban policy focused on the growth of the medium-sized cities and small towns.


It was an industrial city specialising in machine building, chemicals and textiles.  Tianjin was located in harsh environment that was windy, sinking due to the loss of groundwater, and lacking sufficient water.  It was still recovering from the impact of the Tangshan earthquake 10 years earlier, which killed 30,000 Tianjin residents and destroyed significant parts of the city.  Along with the recent earthquake and tsunami in eastern Japan, they are reminders of the risks facing these Pacific rim cities.


However, Tianjin had the good fortune of being nominated in 1984 as one of the 14 coastal cities chosen to lead China’s new ‘open-door’ strategy.  The list was shortened to four the following year, but Tianjin was one of them (the others were Shanghai, Guangzhou and Dalian).  The city was beginning to build upon its industrial past and re-invent itself as a science and technology city, focused on the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA), which had been commenced in 1984.


Moving forward to the present the city is much larger and it is no longer a struggling industrial city.  Tianjin’s population in 2010 is 7.9 million.  It has a vibrant commercial centre and 20 five star hotels.  The cities greening strategies, commenced in the 1980s, have been effective, particularly along the banks of the Haihe.


The Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Express Railway connects the two cities at 350 km/hour in just 30 minutes.  And the Tianjin Binhai International Airport is a major domestic air terminal that also services international flights. In 1986 there were just three incoming flights a day.


It has strong universities, such as Nankai University and its neighbour, Tianjin University, and the Tianjin Medical University.  Flinders staff have connections with all three, including two very substantial, long-standing Masters programs with Nankai University.  Between them the two programs have 1,700 graduates spread throughout China, and another 435 will graduate in October.


Tianjin has been moving its smoke-stack industries to the Binhai New Area, a merger of three former coastal districts, including the TEDA region, in the east of the municipality on the Bohai Gulf.  Thus far 285 Fortune 500 companies have invested in the area.  This includes an assembly plant for the Airbus A320. 


The Sino-Singaporean Tianjin Eco-city is also located close to the centre of the Binhai New Area. The 30 km2 development should be fully developed within the next 10-15 years, and is aiming at a population of 350,000.  Another Italian designed eco-city is intended for Tangshan, adjacent to Tianjin.


Binhai is intending to leverage the economies of agglomeration and scale in the new location to reduce the environmental footprint of industry. The region has long suffered from water shortages, pushing the Tianjin government to invest in a major desalination and power plant in 2005.  A second stage expansion has been underway since 2010.  The idea is to build a cluster of industries and expertise around desalination, leading to the production of fresh water (400,000 tons per day), power and sea salt, as well as waste re-use, and land conservation (Woetzel 2011 p 4).   Adelaide’s new desalination plant will soon commence production.  I suspect we could learn much from Tianjin about their cluster of desalination industries.


CHINA’S CITIES, THE NEXT 25 YEARS


China’s urban population is projected to reach 851 million in 2025, and well over one billion (1,037 million to be precise) in 2050.  It could be a decade or two earlier, according to some projections. Three in every four Chinese will live in a town or city (UN-Habitat 2010; UN 2010).  By 2025, 43 of the world’s 100 largest cities will be in China. 


Five will be mega cities.  Shanghai (20 million), Beijing (15 million), Chonqing (11.1 million), Shenzhen (11.1 million), and Guangzhou (11 million).  Three others will be very close: Tianjin (9.7 million), Wuhan (9.3 million), and Hong Kong (8 million).


There are many challenges confronting China’s large cities but I will confine my thoughts to two broad dimensions essential to building better and sustainable cities in China.  The first is the strategy and planning framework for managing major environmental risks.  The second is how to make the cities better places in which to live and work and help to enhance their resilience.


Strategy and Planning


The Economist Intelligence Unit (2011) has recently released an Asian Green City Index spanning 22 cities measured against eight key environmental dimensions.  On an overall ranking Hong Kong ranked above average (level 2 out of 5), and the other Chinese cities listed, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Wuhan were rated average (level 3).  Tianjin, unfortunately, was not included.  Across the whole sample, Singapore was the only level 1 city, and Karachi the only ranked at level 5.


The scores on the individual dimensions are summarised in Table 1.  Hong Kong had the better ratings, and Shanghai and Beijing were similar, with the latter a little ahead. 


In the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics the media reported that Beijing had the worst air quality of any city in the world.  Anyone walking on the streets of Beijing when the sand is blowing in from the Gobi Desert would probably agree.  On the Index, Beijing comes out poorly, ranked as below average in air quality. However improvements have been made, particularly in trying to reduce the impact of motor vehicles with measures such as the massive replacement of polluting taxis and buses, and a ‘cash for clunkers’ scheme similar to a proposal put forward then withdrawn by the Gillard government in Australia. 


_____________________________________________________________________________________

Table 1

ASIAN GREEN CITY INDEX: BEIJING, SHANGHAI, HONG KONG

_____________________________________________________________________________________

                                                                      

                                                                                Beijing     Shanghai   Hong Kong


                                Energy & CO2                              4                5               2

                                Transport                                      3                3               2

                                Water                                            2                3               3

                                Air Quality                                     4                3               2

                                Land Use & Buildings                   3                4               1

                                Waste                                           3                3               2

                                Sanitation                                     3                3               2

                                Environmental Governance         3                3                2

_____________________________________________________________________________________

1 Well above average  2 Above average  3 Average  4 Below average  5 Well below average


Source: Economist Intelligence Unit 2011 p 11


In terms of environmental governance, Hong Kong scored 2, and Beijing and Shanghai each 3. China’s large cities have strong governance structures.  The cities and their satellites come under a single authority, and in the case of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chonqing, they have provincial status.  Hong Kong, as a Special Administrative Region, is in a similar position.  A sound unitary structure means that the execution of environmental policies and strategies is more effective than in cities with fragmented governance structures such as Jakarta and Manila.  More effective also than the fragmented planning arrangements for the major Australian cities, Brisbane excepted.


There are several positive environmental signs for these cities.  The Shanghai World Expo 2010 had a clear urban environmental theme: ‘Better City, Better Life’.  Several major pavilions demonstrated the new technology for reducing the environmental impact of urban living.  It is also apparent that the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau has been strengthened since the 2008 Olympics. 


I believe there is a positive connection between a city’s intentional strategies for enhancing its world city reputation, the importance it gives globally significant cultural events and its readiness to support the adoption of explicit strategies for enhancing the urban environment.


Hong Kong excluded, the weakness is the opportunity for citizen involvement in environmental strategies.  This leads into my next point.


Urban Community and Resilience


China’s large cities are becoming more global, more wealthy and increasingly well managed.   But are they becoming more liveable cities?  On the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2007 liveability index survey of 215 cities worldwide Hong Kong ranked 70th and Shanghai 100th (UN-Habitat 2010 p177).  No Chinese cities are in the 2010 Mercer ranking of the quality of city life in the top 50 cities.  The only ranked Asian cities are Singapore (28), Tokyo (40), Kobe and Yokohama, both equal 41st.  Adelaide, for comparison, was ranked 32nd.


There has been a steady and significant improvement in the liveability of Chinese cities evident to any regular visitor to China, and the cities are moving up the rankings.  However, two questions need to be posed:

1.    Are the new high-rise housing estates characteristic of China’s large cities functioning as desirable, liveable spaces? 

2.    Will these kinds of urban formations increase the resilience of the city and its residents?


The evidence is mixed, at best.  John Friedman (2010 p 149), the eminent urban planner, believes that


the art of place-making has not informed planners…in the newly industrialising global regions of Asia…Their principle preoccupation has been with the branding of cities and the advanced infrastructure required by global capital.  In the process, millions of ordinary folks have been displaced and their neighbourhoods erased, as speed, movement and power have been valued more than the fragile social infrastructure of place-based communities.


As an example of displacement Friedmann (2010 p 157) cites the destruction of the houses in the hutong, the alleyways of Beijing, displacing up to half a million people between 1998 and 2001.  An acceleration of the process occurred prior to the Beijing Olympics. Residents were resettled in the outer suburbs beyond the fourth ring road.  Neighbourhood formation in the new residential zones is the responsibility of the shequ residents’ committees, of which there are now over 80,000 throughout China.  He describes the process as ‘still undergoing an experimental phase’ (Friedmann 2010 p 160)


In addition, there is little or no serious community involvement in urban planning in China, even when it involves issues of day-to-day significance such as the urban environment.  While the shequ committees can contribute to place-making, through neighbourhood development, it would be more effective if that also involved the community and community organisations. The resilience of cities in the face of environmental pressures, or environmental disasters, depends crucially on community organisation and engagement as well as about effective governance structures.


Cities and Sustainability


Let me conclude with a summary of my overall argument.


Urbanisation in China on a grand scale is a recent phenomenon.  Chinese have lived in villages and towns for millennia, and were drawn into communes during the communist era.  Urban policies restricted growth in the large cities, and focused instead on the development of small and medium cities, especially those in strategic locations.


Now there is much greater focus on large cities and ever expanding metropolitan regions.  These areas lead the country’s economic rise and they fuel the fastest growth of incomes.


Sean Chiao (2010), a planner and Vice President of AECOM, a global engineering and urban design firm with offices in Shanghai, believes this is the only viable way in which China to can attain a sustainable pattern of cities.  China has high rural population densities, a scarcity of land and water, and a large and growing urban population.  Mega-cities, he argues, are the most resource efficient and hence the only viable settlement pattern for China in the future.  This is an ambitious proposition.  In large part, it will depend on the social texture of Chinese cities.


As China becomes the location of many of the world’s largest cities it will become a testing ground for new urban strategies and policies.  One of its greatest challenges will be to reconcile its ambitious economic growth goals with its need for cities that are more liveable and more resilient, and hence more sustainable.  



REFERENCES


Chiao, Sean C.S. 2010 ‘Planning China’s megacities’, McKinsey&Company What Matters.

<http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/cities/planning-china-s-megacities>


Economist Intelligence Unit 2011 Asian Green City Index. Assessing the Performance of Asia’s Major Cities, Siemens AG, Munich

<http://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2011/corporate/2011-02-asia/asian-gci-report-e.pdf>


Friedmann, John (2010) ‘Place and place-making in cities: a global perspective’, Planning Theory and Practice, B11(2), pp.149-165.


United Nations (2010) World Urbanization Prospects. The 2009 Revision, New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.


UN-Habitat (2010) The State of Asian Cities 2010/2011. Fukuoka, Japan: United Nations Human Settlements Programme, Fukuoka


UN-Habitat (2009) Planning Sustainable Cities: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009. London: United Nations Human Settlements Programme/Earthscan.


Woetzel, Jonathan et al 2009 Preparing for China’s Urban Billion, McKinsey Global Institute, McKinsey &Company March 2008.

<http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/reports/pdfs/China_Urban_Billion/MGI_Preparing_for_Chinas_Urban_Billion.pdf>


Woetzel, Jonathan 2011 ‘How green are China’s cities?’ McKinsey Quarterly, January 2011

<https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_green_are_Chinas_cities_2734>