Urbanisation

<html><body>
Behind mega urban projects often stand strong political wills. Xiong’an is called China’s number-one urban project, and it is <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/a-brave-new-world-xis-xiongan/" target="_blank">orchestrated by President Xi Jinping.</a>
China is midway through the <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/china/21640396-how-fix-chinese-cities-great-sprawl-china" target="_blank">largest urbanisation process in human history</a>. New cities have mushroomed in recent decades. The most prominent are <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Shenzhen" target="_blank">Shenzhen</a> (above) and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Shanghai" target="_blank">Pudong Shanghai</a>, both of which are now major global financial and business centres.
Shenzhen and Pudong Shanghai were credited to Deng Xiaoping. China’s then leader <a href="http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0403/c90000-9198362" target="_blank">pushed forward the construction of these cities from scratch</a>, to drive his agenda of national reform and opening up to the world.
After his first five-year term as president, it is clear that Xi Jinping’s political ambition is to equal or even surpass the records of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Mao and Deng each ruled China for nearly three decades, in person and by selecting their successors.
Xi has proclaimed a “new era”, enthroned his “thoughts”, appointed his allies, and outlined national modernisation goals to 2035 and even as far ahead as 2050.
He also amended the Chinese Constitution to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-xi-jinpings-lifetime-presidency-could-change-china-for-better-or-worse-92472" target="_blank">remove the two-term restriction</a> on the presidency. This was the final barrier to pursuing power after 2023, when he was due to step down.
What else? Xi needs a new city, with his name imprinted!
<h2>Putting a new city on the map</h2>
There are three mega-city regions in eastern China. Shenzhen is in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/10/china-pearl-river-delta-then-and-now-photographs" target="_blank">Pearl River Delta</a>, Pudong Shanghai is in the <a href="http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1897065/how-economic-dynamism-yangtze-river-delta-flowing-inland" target="_blank">Yangtze River Delta</a>, so Xi’s new city must be in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217207/original/file-20180502-153895-1hsieuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/217207/original/file-20180502-153895-1hsieuj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt=""></a>
Xi Jinping’s new mega-city, Xiong’an (the area in red) will be located midway between Beijing, Tianjing and Shijiazhuang (click to enlarge). <a class="source" href="https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Xiongxian,+Baoding,+Hebei,+China/@39.0206138,115.7617431,9.06z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x35efa231eb92fcb5:0xb5dfe3f1103da7ee!8m2!3d38.99455!4d116.10865" target="_blank">Google Maps</a>
Xi selected Xiong’an, an underdeveloped area located centrally between Beijing, Tianjing and Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei Province. Xiong’an has a vast water area, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_resources_of_China" target="_blank">rare natural endowment in northern China</a>.
Xi <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201804/02/WS5ac122faa3105cdcf6515949" target="_blank">stressed the principles</a> of “world vision, international standards, Chinese characteristics and high goals” in planning and building Xiong’an. A “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718517303196" target="_blank">Millennium Plan</a>” and a “national strategy”, Xiong’an should be different from, or more ambitious than, its predecessor new cities. Shenzhen was created in the 1980s; Pudong Shanghai in the 1990s; Xiong’an should represent a city-making approach with Chinese characteristics in the 21st century.
<h2>What’s the plan?</h2>
On April 21, 2018, China’s official Xinhua News Agency <a href="http://english.xiongan.gov.cn/2018-04/21/c_129855751.htm" target="_blank">released the planning guidelines</a> for Xiong’an. This followed their endorsement by the Central Committee of the Chinese Community Party and the State Council.
These planning documents will guide the development of Xiong’an until 2035 and envision its long-term progress until the middle of this century. This aligns with Xi’s timelines for national modernisation goals.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l1hXrz1F3Qg?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" frameborder="0" width="440" height="260"></iframe>
Xiong'an is presented as central to President Xi Jinping’s vision of national development for decades to come.
Key elements of the guidelines are:
<ul>
<li>
visions: a green, ecological and liveable new area; an innovation-driven development; a demonstration area of coordinated development; and a pioneer in China’s modernisation strategy
</li>
<li>
targets: 2035 – basic construction of a high-level socialist modern city that is green, low-carbon, smart, competitive, influential and harmonious with humans and nature; mid-21st century – comprehensive construction complete, a key pillar of the world-class Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei city region
</li>
<li>
spatial specifications: green space 70%, development land 30% (a total area of around 530km²), arable land 18% (including permanent farming land 10%), population density 10,000 people/km²
</li>
<li>
non-capital city functions transferred from Beijing: universities and research institutions, hospitals and health, finance, advanced services and high-tech industries
</li>
<li>
priority industry sectors: new information technology, life and biological sciences, new materials, advanced modern services, and green and ecological agriculture
</li>
<li>
transport connectivity: high-speed rail network – 20 minutes to the new Beijing airport, 30 minutes to Beijing and Tianjing, and 60 minutes to Shijiazhuang; expressway network – 60 minutes to Beijing and Tianjing, and 90 minutes to Shijiazhuang; 90% green transport share and 80% public transit share in vehicle transport in the initial development area; exploring intelligent driving and logistics systems.
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Can it be done?</h2>
The targets suggest a new city with a population of 5 million erected by 2035 and completed by around 2050. Be mindful: Chinese city plans are normally “conservative” in setting targets.
Is the plan achievable? State ownership of land and a centralised planning system will ensure it happens at a speed and scale hardly paralleled elsewhere. Think of Shenzhen and Pudong Shanghai.
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95442/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">However, the most important factor is whether President Xi’s desired political pathway remains on track.
<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/richard-hu-7319">Richard Hu</a>, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Design, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-canberra-865" target="_blank">University of Canberra</a>
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/xiongan-xi-jinpings-new-city-making-machine-turned-on-95442" target="_blank">original article</a>.
</body></html>

j.ballantyne1990-6AQqhLzZaK

China president Xi Jinping is conducting the largest urbanisation in human history

<html><body>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/73853/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">
GUEST OBSERVER
The global focus on US President Donald Trump has largely been on his inflammatory rhetoric and relative inexperience. A less substantive body of commentary has considered his policy platform, including his economic policies.
Among the most prominent of these policies is a commitment to:
… [r]efocus government spending on American infrastructure and away from the Obama-Clinton globalisation agenda.
Trump is not the first to identify increased infrastructure as a strategic economic imperative. Across the globe governments are turning to infrastructure as an instrument of economic policy.
Australia has since 2007 operated an infrastructure agency to prioritise and plan infrastructure provision at the national scale. The UK, New Zealand and Canada have also established national infrastructure planning agencies.
In Australia, this “infrastructure turn” has eclipsed metropolitan planning as a means of intervening in cities.
Among global political and economic institutions, infrastructure has risen to prominence as a priority for national intervention and trans-national co-operation. Many agencies have called for increased spending on infrastructure.
The World Economic Forum, for example, has lamented that while estimated global demand for infrastructure exceeds US$3.7 trillion in investment value, only US$2.7 trillion is being provided. This leaves a US$1 trillion “infrastructure gap”.
The APEC Forum in 2013 established a multi-year plan on infrastructure development and investment. The G20 has established the Global Infrastructure Hub and the Global Infrastructure Connectivity Alliance to help with infrastructure investment. The World Bank helped set up the Global Infrastructure Facility in 2015.
What is driving this shift?
The reasons for the new focus on infrastructure are debatable. Four explanations offer possible insight.
First, at a simple material level, the focus on infrastructure reflects rapid urbanisation at the global scale. Millions more urban residents need water, energy, transport and telecommunications. But urbanisation does not in itself demand infrastructure.
A more systemic explanation is the use of infrastructure as a “spatial fix” for the contradictions of urban capitalism. At its most basic level, the agglomeration of economic activity in cities creates resource and congestion problems, which impede economic growth.
Capitalist economies seek to “fix” these problems with infrastructure investment that overcomes spatial frictions on flows of people, water, waste, energy and information. Under conditions of increasing urban complexity, infrastructure megaprojects appear more comprehensible and immediate “solutions” to urban problems than previous fixes using metropolitan spatial planning.
A further explanation is that infrastructure is being used as a sink for excess low-cost capital within the global economy. Such capital is otherwise unable to find sufficient destinations for productive investment.
Under such conditions, capital “switches” from productive investment into investment in the built environment. Infrastructure is the major component of this.
Finally, sustained weakness in the global economy has reduced the attractiveness of productive investment as a source of profit in favour of rents. We can thus observe the systematic emergence of “infrastructure rents” in the global economy – rentiers capture monopolies on particular infrastructure types.
Of these four explanations, the first is the most commonly presented. Yet it has perhaps the weakest explanatory power.
Critiquing the global infrastructure push
For critical urban social scientists, the global infrastructure turn poses a number of conceptual and methodological issues.
The first question is to test whether it’s specifically different from other forms of urban investment.
Cities have long been sites of physical building, including major developments and facilities. Yet the practices of global infrastructure involve mobilising capital, governments, information and production at a massive new scale via major international institutions and may be viewed as a distinctive urban phenomenon.
A second question is to understand how infrastructure has become a discourse in global policy. Global agencies almost universally view infrastructure as a beneficial phenomenon to be promoted. How this began and has been promulgated deserves greater investigation.
A third question is how infrastructure has become a field of specialist knowledge in its own right. And what implications does this have for understanding the role of infrastructure?
Infrastructure projects have developed their own language of financial appraisal, technical design and social and environmental impact. This then hampers democratic scrutiny of these projects.
The democratic problem
Finally, the politics of infrastructure demand attention. Infrastructure is often a site of political contestation, yet many infrastructure decision-making processes attenuate or repress democratic participation. The role of the state is often placed in tension, especially when private motivations drive infrastructure development.
There is a lack of transparency of interests – in terms of who benefits, both legally and surreptitiously, and who is affected or disadvantaged by infrastructure development. This is a clear problem that deserves greater investigation.
Large infrastructure projects have long fascinated politicians, governments and publics. Trump demonstrates the persistence of this fascination. Many view the need for infrastructure as an inevitable consequence of an increasingly urban world.
Yet the global turn towards infrastructure needs to be critically appraised beyond the utopian engineering rhetoric. We need to understand its causes and motivations, especially within the structural crisis of global capitalism and the efforts to resolve it.
We must also be attentive to the problematic aspects of the global infrastructure turn. The deployment of trillions of dollars in infrastructure investment necessarily demands clear democratic transparency and accountability. This applies not only to the money spent but to the effects on cities, societies, polities and the environment.
<h2 class="caption"> </h2>
Jago Dodson is professor of Urban Policy and Director, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University and author for The Conversation. He can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jago-dodson-2359" target="_blank">here</a>.
</body></html>

jchancellor-FAypfDUnLy

Making sense of the global infrastructure turn: Jago Dodson

<html><body>
GUEST OBSERVER
One of the effects of urbanisation is an increasing number of people choosing to live in the inner city, particularly in high density neighbourhoods. 
Re-zoning has allowed many residential areas to become mixed use zones whereby apartment high rises, houses and restaurant strips exist all on the same street. 
In Victoria, these zones are often centred around transport hubs, nearby either tram lines or train stations. All these elements make the hustle and bustle of the city, but one might argue it's getting a little too noisy. External noise has become a modern day pollutant that is difficult to escape, and has captured Secret Agent’s attention.
In Secret Agent’s Healthy Environment report, we recommended buying property that is not located on a main road or nearby train stations to avoid high levels of external noise while at home. It has been found that noise can have detrimental health effects such as cardiovascular disease, even if you think you’ve become accustomed to the low grumblings of traffic and passing trains.
Secret Agent recently discovered that, in addition to poor health outcomes, external noise can have a negative impact on the value of property. The following points summarise what we have discovered about noise throughout our ongoing investigations:
• Houses located on a noisy street in inner Melbourne are worth 7 percent less than the average house on a quiet street.
• Properties directly opposite a train line might have good accessibility but they are approximately 6 percent lower in value than those located a street back from a train line.
• Noise can impact how you feel at home. Studies have suggested that impulsive noise such as loud chatter from your neighbours or pedestrians is more annoying than     constant traffic noise. (Kennedy and Buys, 2010)
• Noise can affect you physiologically with statistical relationships established between noise such as railway and road traffic with cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment and tinnitus. (WHO, 2011)
• Even low frequency sound waves that you cannot hear can still be felt by the body and cause damage to the inner ear.
Out of all the senses, hearing is probably the most overlooked when it comes to creating spaces. In order to house the rapidly growing population in modern cities, without sacrificing quality of life, there is a greater need to control the increasing sources of noise and the design of spaces that contain them.
For more information, <a href="https://secretagent.com.au/" target="_blank">click here</a>.
</body></html>

Urbanisation

Editor's Picks

Have something to contribute?

Developments

New apartments

New townhouses

News

Urbanisation

Editor's Picks

Receive the latest news stories to your inbox

Have something to contribute?

Developments

New apartments

New townhouses

News