China Urged to Shift Urban Growth to Supercities
March 24th, 2008Via: Reuters:
Shifting China’s model of urbanization to favor huge supercities could boost per capita output, improve energy efficiency and help contain the loss of arable land, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) said on Monday.
Rapid urbanization has been a major driver of Chinese growth over the past two decades and will become more so over the next 20 years; cities will account for 95 percent of China’s gross domestic product by 2025, up from 75 percent today, MGI said.
But the institute, the economics research arm of consultants McKinsey & Co, said in a report that China could reap even greater economic benefits by adopting a more concentrated pattern of urban growth.
By enforcing land acquisition rules more strictly and by tweaking incentives for local officials, national policy makers could nurture 15 supercities with average populations of 25 million people, the report said.
Alternatively, planners could develop 11 clusters of cities with combined populations of more than 60 million people.
China currently only has two cities of more than 10 million people, Beijing and Shanghai.
China’s urbanization rate doubled between 1980 and 2005 to 44 percent and will climb to 66 percent by 2025, driven by the influx of an additional 240 million rural migrants, MGI said.
This flight from the land will impose huge strains.
Urban China will need to find double the energy and water resources they now consume. Arable land could shrink 20 percent in the worst case, and pollution, no matter what, will be severe.
Let’s all celebrate the latest embracing of the post-Maoist Chinese model of life:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/taiwan-stocks-rally-vote-lifts/story.aspx?guid={442DE2FF-9C4C-4AA2-B7E3-B356EE07FAE6}
The markets certainly approve.