China needs to build 10 more megacities to ease pollution and traffic pressure on Beijing, top planner says
Too many top schools and company headquarters are located in the capital and it’s time to spread the resources around, official says
China needs 10 new megacities – each with top schools, hospitals and corporate headquarters – to ease the strain on Beijing, a top economic planner has said.
Public services were simply too concentrated in the capital, which meant more people were flocking there to live, worsening pollution and gridlock, Yang Weimin told a forum in Chongqing on the weekend.
Yang, who is the deputy chair of the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs, supported the government’s urbanisation plan for 2014-2020, calling for megacities to be established in the northeast, central and western areas.
But he went a step further, by putting the number of new giant cities needed at 10, and said they should be built within five years.
“If company headquarters, top hospitals and the best universities were relocated, the diseases [in Beijing] would be cured and neighbouring areas would have more opportunities,” Yang said.
In much the same way that the Yangtze River Delta is anchored by three economic giants – the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and Shanghai – the less-developed areas in the northeast, centre and west should be rooted in existing key cities. In the west for instance, the anchors could be Chengdu and Chongqing, he said.
READ MORE: Megalopolis: the future of urban planning in China
