The McKinsey Global Institute has just published a major report outlining four potential scenarios for urbanization in China.The main thrust of the report is that China needs to focus less on growing its cities and more on making them efficient and productive. Given the massive levels of capital investment Chinese cities have seen over the last 20 years, it makes sense that the country's urban planners need to find ways to squeeze more capacity out of these systems. After all, as McKinsey projects, another 350 million people will need to be accommodated, some 250 million of them as rootless rural migrants.
The McKinsey Global Institute has just published a major report outlining four potential scenarios for urbanization in China.
The main thrust of the report is that China needs to focus less on growing its cities and more on making them efficient and productive. Given the massive levels of capital investment Chinese cities have seen over the last 20 years, it makes sense that the country's urban planners need to find ways to squeeze more capacity out of these systems. After all, as McKinsey projects, another 350 million people will need to be accommodated, some 250 million of them as rootless rural migrants.
While McKinsey forecasts that the most likely trajectory, given no intervention, is a dispersal of urban population growth to a much larger array of mid-sized cities (which is China means settlements of 1.5-5 million people!). The report argues that while the central government can't directly control urban growth, it can utilize infrastructure spending and political muscle to concentrate growth in a handful of larger cities, reducing land and energy consumption and concentrating domestic talent and foreign investment in highly productive clusters.
Along with the full report is an interactive feature that lets you play out some of the projections. Watching the entire eastern seaboard of China turn into a more-or-less continuous sprawl of urbanization is fascinating. I wonder how Europeans might have felt in the 1960s watching the same thing for North America (they had to make do with the static maps of Jean Gottman's Megalopolis).
A summary of the report is available in the McKinsey Quarterly.
While we're on it, anyone wishing to understand the last 20 years of Chinese urbanization (and the deep historical context of the last 100 years) ought to be reading Tom Campanella's stupendous book Concrete Dragon (Amazon), published earlier this year.
Pennsylvania Mall Conversion Bill Passes House
If passed, the bill would promote the adaptive reuse of defunct commercial buildings.
World's Largest Wildlife Overpass In the Works in Los Angeles County
Caltrans will soon close half of the 101 Freeway in order to continue construction of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing near Agoura Hills in Los Angeles County.
U.S. Supreme Court: California's Impact Fees May Violate Takings Clause
A California property owner took El Dorado County to state court after paying a traffic impact fee he felt was exorbitant. He lost in trial court, appellate court, and the California Supreme Court denied review. Then the U.S. Supreme Court acted.
New York’s Deadliest Neighborhoods for Pedestrians
Pedestrian deaths rose last year, but remain below pre-2020 levels.
Eviction Looms for Low-Income Tenants as Rent Debt Rises
Nonprofit housing operators across the country face almost $10 billion in rent debt.
Brightline West Breaks Ground
The high-speed rail line will link Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area.
City of Costa Mesa
Licking County
Barrett Planning Group LLC
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Tufts University, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy & Planning
City of Universal City TX
ULI Northwest Arkansas
Write for Planetizen
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.