Almost one-third of Chinese cities are shrinking, but urban planners keep building
March 26, 2019 Category China News Round-up, Weekly
The perception that China’s urbanization is still in full swing is untrue for nearly one-third of Chinese cities, whose populations are shrinking, according to new findings by a research team from Tsinghua University in Beijing. The university used satellite imagery to monitor the intensity of night lights in more than 3,300 cities and towns between 2013 and 2016. In 28% of the cities, light intensity was reduced. China now has 938 shrinking cities, according to Long Ying, an urban planning expert at Tsinghua University, who founded and led the research group, Beijing City Lab. This is more than any other nation on earth.
The findings are indicative of declining populations and economic activity across almost one-third of the cities monitored, at a time when official economic data also shows that China is facing significant economic and demographic challenges. The problem is getting worse. Between 2000 and 2012, previous analysis showed that China had fewer shrinking cities than France, Germany, the UK and the U.S. Long told a seminar in Shanghai that he is looking forward to China’s 2020 census to see whether the trend of shrinking cities is confirmed.
The Chinese cities under the greatest pressure of shrinking include those heavily dependent on natural resources, such as the coal mining town of Hegang in Heilongjiang province. Also diminishing are cities “in the process of transformation”, such as Yiwu in Zhejiang province, once the “largest small commodity wholesale market in the world” and famous for its sprawling networks of stalls selling counterfeit goods.
Another huge problem facing China is that the urban shrinkage identified in images beamed back from outer space is going unnoticed by those planning cities on the ground. The country’s city planners, which take orders from municipal authorities, are still drawing up plans based upon the assumption that China’s urban areas will grow indefinitely, the South China Morning Post reports.
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