The World Bank recently released a report saying the Pearl River Delta (PRD) of China overtook Tokyo to become the world’s biggest urban area in 2010 in both size and population. The report said by 2010, the total population of the PRD had reached 42 million, more than that of Argentina, Australia, Canada or Malaysia.

Statistics indicate that from 2000 to 2010 in East Asia, about 200 million people moved into urban areas, and the area expanded by 2.4% on the basis of annual average. In 2010, the urban land area reached 134,800 square kilometers; the urban population grew even faster, with an average annual increase of 3.0%, and reached 778 million in 2010. Relevant data show that in Europe, the urbanization with the same number of population took more than 50 years. Concerning this, Axel van Trotsenburg, World Bank’s Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific Region, said, “Fast urbanization is a challenge for East Asia. It is important to ensure that urban growth will benefit more and more population moving into urban areas, especially the poverty-stricken population.”

The National New-type Urbanization Plan (2014-2020) requires that the PRD should set the target to build a world-class cluster of cities to attend higher-level international cooperation and competition. Related experts said that to improve the competitiveness for global competition, innovation-driven industrial transformation and upgrading should be promoted and that emphasis should be laid on the improvement of the driving ability of research and development to promote diversified industrial development.

What’s more, attention should be paid to sustainable development. A fast urbanization mode should be based on efficient transportation network, good ecological environment, people-centered social effect and diversified and inclusive culture with local characteristics to coordinate economic development with environment and social development. For example, the construction of the world’s most intensive rail transit network of Tokyo following the principle of “public transport first” may be used as reference. Such traffic network play a very important role in promoting regional integration and efficient cooperation between cities. Professor Tang Zilai from the Department of Urban Planning of Tongji University said that infrastructure construction, development of public service facilities and industrial development are closely related to each other and that enough attention should be paid to coordinate the relationship between economy, society, environment and development modes.

The report also said that due to the urban fragmentization, about 350 urban areas in East Asia spill over local administrative boundaries. Such growth of urban areas also brings great challenges. Under some circumstances, multiple cities are merged into single urban areas and are continuously put under separated administration. Related experts believe that for the PRD region, administrative system barriers should be broken to promote regional integration and form up unique advantages in global production, consumption and control and management. It was learnt that currently Guangdong is promoting the overall planning for the PRD, aiming to solve related problems in an all-around and coordinated way from top-level design to technical measures and system and mechanism innovation.

The report also pointed out that in East Asia, though with a fast growth of urban areas, the size of urban area only accounted for less than 1% of the total area, and the urban population accounted for 36% of the total population only. Therefore, the urbanization is still at an initial stage, with huge potential for further development.

Source: Nanfang Daily, January 28, 2015