Sleepwalking through the Greater Bay Area
- As the debate goes on as to whether Beijing’s grand plan will be a success, what is being missed is that the trend of the megacity is already happening
Some argue the grand project will be a success, others say it will be a failure, still many are taking a “wait and see” approach. But what is rarely pointed out is that Beijing is actually behind the times and playing catch-up.
Such man-made barriers as political, legal and economic structures (“one country, two systems”), currency convertibility, separate passports and customs controls, will slow down but not stop integration in the region. Like it or not, the Greater Bay Area is already happening.
Why? Because you can’t fight the mega forces of geography, technology and global urbanisation trends.
All these have been studied and predicted in the mid-1990s with great precision by the distinguished Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, in the first of his three-volume masterwork, The Information Age.
“What is emerging is a megacity of 40 to 50 million people, connecting Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Macau, and small towns in the Pearl River Delta,” wrote Castells in The Rise of the Network Society, first published in 1996.
“I shall refer to a megacity in the making that is not even yet on the map but that, in my opinion, will be one of the pre-eminent industrial, business and cultural centres of the 21st century, without indulging in futurology: the Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Canton-Pearl River Delta-Macau-Zhuhai metropolitan regional system.”
Some commentators claim the Chinese are playing desperate catchup to such economic hubs as the San Francisco and Tokyo Bay areas, and the New York port area, but Castells has already warned against such comparisons.
“Unlike this classical case [of the northeastern seaboard of the US], the region is not made of the physical conurbation of successive urban/suburban units with relative autonomy in each, [but] an interdependent unit, economically, functionally, and socially.
“The Southern China Metropolis, only vaguely perceived … at this time [1996], is likely to become the most representative urban face of the 21st century.”
Interestingly, Castells had warned about “large-scale epidemics” – think H5N1 bird flu (1997) and Sars (2002-03) – and “disintegration of social control” – say localist radicalism – “that will make megacities less attractive”.
Castells has long ago perceived the intrinsic logic of the information age and its political economy, while many of us are still sleepwalking through it.
