Lu Dadao, one of China's renowned economic geologists and
director of the Geographic Society of China, has warned that the
trend of frenzied high-speed urbanization that has taken root in
the country breaches the principle of orderly and gradual
development and deviates from the normal process of urbanization.
He urged that greater efforts be made by the government and society
at large to stop the blind pursuit of large-scale construction, and
serious land wastage in the planning stages.
Also an academic with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lu is an
expert in regional planning and city development. A member of the
11th Five-Year Plan expert team, Lu has led
expert teams in three key state-level regional planning projects
including the "Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei Metropolis Circle", "Yangtze
River Delta Region" and "Northeast China Rejuvenation".
66-year-old Lu has traveled extensively throughout China to
conduct field research, recording everything he sees and hears. His
findings haven't always been positive, and he's written on several
occasions to the State Council and Ministry of Construction
officials reporting the many problems that have arisen as a result
of city construction.
According to Lu, China's level of urbanization over a mere
22-year-period rose from 17.9 percent in 1978 to 39.1 percent in
2002, an astonishing increase even by international standards. It
took the UK 120 years, the US 80 years, and Japan slightly more
than 30 years to achieve those levels.
"However, we cannot focus only on speed; we must keep in mind
the fundamentals of urbanization, which is primarily the end-result
of economic and social development. The current trend of building
and construction on a large-scale is more fixated on the
transformation of land than the urbanization of the population. If
allowed to continue unchecked, this method of development will have
a serious impact on sustainable development.
"Recently, proposals have been put forward setting targets of
over 50 percent urbanization by 2010. This is very unreasonable,"
Lu stressed. "In fact, even the current figure of 43 percent
urbanization is unrealistic. This is because it includes 100
million farmer-turned-migrant workers. There is still a big gap
between them and urbanites. And what is important to understand is
that the lands of the farmers might have been urbanized, but not
them or their families."
According to Lu, the size of China's farmlands decreased by 100
million?mu (15 mu = 1 hectare) in seven
years, from 1996 to 2003, most of the land taken over by
cities.
Statistics from the Ministry of Land and Resources show that
current land consumption for city and town construction is 240,000
sq km on average; per capita consumption is over 130 sq m, higher
than the 82.4 sq m in developed countries and 83.3 sq m in
developing countries.
"Even in New York City, land used for construction per capita is
112.5 sq m.
"In many large and medium cities in China, many large public
facilities have been built up, such as wide roads, large green
space and squares. They all look very beautiful and luxurious, no
less than those in western countries. But many of them are worth
more than the economic development level of the cities. It isn't
only the capital cities that are building on a massive scale; many
small cities are building large-scale projects as huge as the new
Guangzhou Exhibition Center. Such high land consumption levels will
not only damage the city's image, but also cultural and historical
sites," Lu warned.
Without naming names, Lu cited the example of a small city that
has taken the urban planning pledge a little too far. Using
international cities like London and Paris as models, the local
government has visions of a super-large city which is 10 times the
size of London and six times the size of Paris, covering a total
area of 70,000 sq km.
"At a working meeting a few months ago, I told the vice mayor,
who is in charge of city construction, that if they use 76 sq km of
land every year, the city will have no land to spare in 15 years.
Even adding farmland to the equation would only stretch that to 35
years."
The development frenzy which started in the late 1980s gave rise
to problems as early as 2002 and 2003. Between 2004 and 2005, four
state departments started checking on land use.
Lu said: "I was invited to lead an expert study team. We axed
thousands of development zone plans. At that time, there were over
10,000 development zones all over the country. Even some small
towns had more than one. The trend these days is to build large
buildings, squares and overpasses.
"Many of these projects are superfluous. I saw a very huge and
complicated overpass in one of the central Chinese cities, bigger
than the overpass linking Beijing's fourth ring road to the
airport. My field investigations showed that the overpass would not
handle traffic flows that it was designed to handle even in 10 or
20 years. It is absolutely not necessary."
In small and medium-sized cities, large areas of farmland are
occupied to build whole new cities. Government buildings are moved
to up to 10 km away from the old city area. In one poverty stricken
county in central China, there is a new office building that covers
an area of 50,000 sq m; the main office building of its Land and
Resources Bureau is several thousand sq m big, but the building
houses only several dozen personnel.
"Looking at the city plans of some capital cities, the decision
makers intend to learn from the development mode of Shanghai's
Pudong area. However, Shanghai has unique traits that have shaped
its development including its location and economic status. Other
cities areas don't have those same traits, so large-scale planning
and spending are very risky. It will result in the overconsumption
of farmland and water resources and severe environmental pollution,
which is not conducive?to the long-term development of
China."
To prevent that from happening, Lu suggested laying down strict
standards on land use and scientifically based regulations on the
per capita use of land, and energy and water consumption, and
transport structures.
"Cities should make their development goals in the light of
local circumstances and conditions. For example, a garden city
concept is not suitable for every city, especially not in drought
areas with rainfall of less than 400 mm."
"However, standards and regulations are not enough. The system
to evaluate the performance of local government officials also
needs to be changed. More emphasis should be put on what they have
done to protect the environment and to save land."
(China.org.cn by Wang Qian, July 24, 2006)