Chinalopoli

Plan to employ, feed, house, educate and entertain more than 300 million new people within 25 years. This isn't a computer game, but real planning policy in China. With yet more of the under-employed rural poor hoping to move, this is an unprecedented urban expansion that has profound implications for China. Increasingly - as the Middle Kingdom's trading and cultural prowess is awoken - this dynamic period will also impact upon the rest of the world.

The imperial Forbidden City's ancient courtyards are the centre point of Beijing's gridded infrastructure of multi-lane ring roads, arterial motorways and intersections. The seat of power in China, Beijing is itself rapidly expanding physically and culturally. But its crucial function is as the centre of twenty-first century China, and its network of cities.

China's modern activity started in the coastal regions and cities. These foreign trading exchange points are funnels for exporting cheaper and now more sophisticated goods abroad, and for importing higher-end technology to feed the hunger for modernity. With the widespread construction of international airports, the other major cities - such as Chengdu, Wuhan and Nanjing - are also seeing intense urban development as they become better connected.

Hand in hand with increased agricultural efficiency, cities are growing fast, as under-employed rural labour floods towards higher wages. This process happened in Europe - over a period of about 600 years and on a smaller scale.

Spare income from city work is being sent back to the rural areas, and further waves of development across China are building up in the interior. Consumerism and avarice are raw and rife, and Premier Wen Jiabao's opening of the trading at the New York Stock Exchange in December 2003 will be a history-book image of modern China.

However the country remains a largely centrally planned totalitarian communist state. These paradoxes are blurred by a growing assertion of identity - China is a global centre of invention, production and culture.

I had worked in Hong Kong in the late 1980's, when that city was building fast and tall. Again in the mid 1990's when there was a shortage of architects (and too many in Europe). A highly successful city of infectious and tangible energy that had developed unique qualities through its special geography, and it's citizens. Hong Kong increasingly relied on the hinterland of mainland China's Shenzhen and Guangzhou for factory production and resources.

Deng Shao Ping's "Special Economic Zone" blurred Shenzhen's status as a free trade area of China. This reform was followed by others; a steady process of liberalisation, interrupted by the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. Shenzhen grew by 12 million people in 10 years.

Hong Kong is now inter-connected with Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Macau as part of the Pearl River Delta - the most dynamic economic region in China, and the first of the Chinese megalopoli in the making.

In 2004 we were invited to take part in a competition for a 65,000 sqm museum, as part of the Zhujiang New Town to the East of Guangzhou. Planned with a central axis connecting parkland to the main station and Pearl River, sports stadia, mixed use developments including an 80-storey tower, and numerous towers in excess of 40 storeys. The museum was promoted as a cultural project, adjacent to the site for Zaha Hadid's Opera House.

The new town is served by underground rail lines, sub-grade parking and extensive pre-planted landscaping controlled by a 40%-of-site-area "greening" policy. The organised bus tour of the site took us past the Guangzhou Exhibition Centre (the biggest in the world and being expanded) and along the avenues of newly planted trees beside the Pearl River walkways.

The Pearl River - currently toxic and highly pungent - is the target of concerted clean-up operations. The Major of Guangzhou has been instructed to swim across the river before his term ends by the Beijing appointed provincial governor. The 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games, advertised in the image above, are officially promoted as "Wholesome and Exciting, Green and Clean".

To some, ugly illiterate architecture may be the norm, but it represents "progress", which is understood in a unique way locally. The mix of uses, including cultural and arts buildings, public transportation systems and landscaping suggest that planners are trying to address the complex problems of modern cities, and have not simply sold land to speculators.

Prominent in a central park is the Shanghai Museum of City Planning, a popular destination. The spacious entrance hall has a striking revolving golden sculpture representing a perfect city of sky scrapers, with the phrase "Better City, Better Life" in large red letters above. Upstairs is a giant model of Shanghai with elevated walkways to view from. This shows the 4000 plus 40-storey towers built or under construction, alongside the Expo 2012 site, harbours and terminals.

The region is to have 10 new cities of 1 million people each. Every one with 10 satellite towns of 200,000 people, all with motorways and high speed rail connections as part of the "Interlocking Metropolitan Regions" policy. This is a strategy to avoid the extremes of over- densification and sub-urbanisation, to form a net of cities.

The first-built electro-magnetic levitation train now runs at 400km/hr between Shanghai city and a new airport. There are plans to connect regional cities with other high speed train networks. International airports are being started and completed yearly, and new underground systems are growing rapidly.

Urban open space systems are widespread - parks and gardens for exercises, pedestrianised streets for strolling, and large floor plate restaurants for the uniquely Chinese habit of public/social/business eating out. Chinese authorities visit Europe not to marvel at modernity there, but to investigate how old buildings are restored and incorporated into the urban fabric.

Interest in Green Energy such as hydrogen fuel cell technology are symptomatic of rising energy concerns in China. China's use of 2.5 million barrels of oil a day is expected to quadruple by 2025. Meanwhile extensive open coal mines are being opened by the day. China is eager to learn, and can leap-frog the discredited out-dated technologies of the developed world.

As China produces more goods and more sophisticated products, the developed world has less and less to sell other than new ideas and technologies. China's cities are not only expanding, they are also developing as imported ideas and established culture are assimilated and re-configured.

Matthew Priestman 20.04.2007

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