The Rise and Decline of Car Use in Beijing and Shanghai

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Gao ◽  
Peter Newman ◽  
Jeffrey Kenworthy
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
First Century ◽  
Growth Spurt ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Chinese Cities ◽  
Car Use ◽  
Urban Rail ◽  
Mixed Land Use ◽  
Dramatic Growth

Chinese cities have primarily evolved around walking, bicycling and public transport with their dense, linear form and mixed land use. The recent urban growth spurt has involved private motorisation, but because of land constraints and not fearing urban density, as in Anglo-Saxon cities, the same dense urbanism has been maintained. This means that automobiles do not easily fit into this traditional fabric and especially the historic walking fabric. Issues like congestion and air quality have become major constraints to further growth. Using Beijing and Shanghai as case studies, the next phase of urban and transport development now appears to be to reduce car use with the dramatic growth in urban rail as in most developed cities in the twenty-first century. This decoupling of car use from economic growth is consistent with other developed cities but is a first for emerging cities, hence the paper aims to explain this pattern from the cultural, political and especially urban fabric perspectives. The application to other Chinese cities and emerging cities is now possible following Beijing and Shanghai’s lead.

Eco-efficiency Convergence and Green Urban Growth in China

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 307-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianhuan Huang ◽  
Yue Hua
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Spatial Modeling ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Chinese Cities ◽  
Efficiency Measures ◽  
Convergence Clubs ◽  
High Level

Eco-efficiency measures if economic growth and environmental protection are effectively balanced. To understand the path of green urban growth in China, this article examines the converging patterns of eco-efficiency for 191 Chinese cities within 2003 and 2013. Two types of modified Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methods and spatial modeling approach are adopted in empirical analyses, with cities grouped based on three types of heterogeneities that facilitate the formation of potential convergence clubs. We find that major Chinese cities are β-converging in their eco-efficiency scores and are forming place-based convergence clubs in terms of geographical location, environmental policy, and resource endowments. Less efficient clubs are converging at a faster speed toward low-level steady states, while more efficient clubs are reaching separate high-level equilibria with relatively slow rates and longer half-life. We further raise corresponding policy implications that aim at retarding or reversing the ongoing trend of eco-efficiency deterioration.

Three Challenges for the Social Investment Strategy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Myles
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
Investment Strategy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Current Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Wage Outcomes

Three challenges are highlighted in this chapter to the realization of the social investment strategy in our twenty-first-century world. The first such challenge—intertemporal politics—lies in the term ‘investment’, a willingness to forego some measure of current consumption in order to realize often uncertain gains in the future that would not occur otherwise, such as better schooling, employment, and wage outcomes for the next generation. Second, the conditions that enabled our post-war predecessors to invest heavily in future-oriented public goods—a sustained period of economic growth and historically exceptional tolerance for high levels of taxation—no longer obtain. Third, the millennial cohorts who will bear the costs of a new, post-industrial, investment strategy are more economically divided than earlier cohorts and face multiple demands raised by issues such as population aging and global warming, among others.

scholarly journals What is beyond the edges? Gated communities and their role in China’s desire for harmonious cities

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Badiaa Hamama ◽  
Jian Liu
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Gated Communities ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
Chinese Cities ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Process Of Urbanization ◽  
New Urbanization

Abstract During the rapid process of urbanization in post-reform China, cities assumed the role of a catalyst for economic growth and quantitative construction. In this context, territorially bounded and well delimited urban cells, globally known as ‘gated communities’, xiaoqu, continued to define the very essence of Chinese cities becoming the most attractive urban form for city planners, real estate developers, and citizens alike. Considering the guidelines in China’s National New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020), focusing on the promotion of humanistic and harmonious cities, in addition to the directive of 2016 by China’s Central Urban Work Conference to open up the gates and ban the construction of new enclosed residential compounds, this paper raises the following questions: As the matrix of the Chinese urban fabric, what would be the role of the gated communities in China’s desire for a human-qualitative urbanism? And How to rethink the gated communities to meet the new urban challenges? Seeking alternative perspectives, this paper looks at the gated communities beyond the apparent limits they seem to represent, considering them not simply as the ‘cancer’ of Chinese cities, rather the container of the primary ingredients to reshape the urban fabric dominated by the gate.

scholarly journals Differentiated outlook to portray secondary cities in South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-477
Author(s):  
Andre DW Brand ◽  
◽  
Johannes E Drewes ◽  
Maléne Campbell ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
South African Context ◽  
Regional Networks ◽  
Extended Phase ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Common

<abstract> <p>Cities are playing an increasingly important role in the development and growth of countries. A country's growth and prosperity is largely dependent on the efficient functioning of its cities. The reliance of countries on the ability of their cities to perform crucial central functions, for national growth, continues to rise. South Africa has a long-standing network of cities, towns and localities. These have developed and become hierarchised over the course of history during which population settlements and their distribution have been influenced by colonisation, segregation, industrialisation and globalisation. Since 1911, South Africa has undergone an extended phase of intense urban growth, with areas such as Johannesburg, Cape Town and eThekwini (Durban) agglomerating into dominating economic spaces. There are, however, no universally accepted, distinct criteria that constitute the general characteristics of secondary cities. The common assumption is that secondary cities are those cities that find themselves below the apex of what are considered primary cities. Furthermore, internationally, secondary cities appear to be considered as important catalysts for balanced and dispersed economic growth. In the South African context, the notion of what constitutes secondary cities is to a large extent underdeveloped. The aim of the paper is to appraise interconnected regional networks as a differentiated and novel outlook when determining secondary cities in South Africa. What is evident from the paper is that there are different potential alternatives with which to portray secondary cities.</p> </abstract>

The China Factor

2020 ◽  
pp. 142-163
Author(s):  
Robert I. Rotberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Labor Force ◽  
Human Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Primary Products ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Twenty First Century

Solving Africa’s central concerns of the mid-twenty-first century—how to grow economically as its population surges and how to create more and more jobs for its burgeoning labor force—relies on China. Likewise, enabling Africa to improve its human security and human welfare in most of its component nations depends on China. Third, strengthening Africa’s infrastructural architecture depends mostly on China. Without steady domestic Chinese economic growth and the behemoth’s consequent continued need for primary resources derived from Africa, however, prospects for many of the latter continent’s nation-states are, at best, problematic. Chinese demand drives African prosperity, raises world prices for primary products, and has made it possible for a number of the polities of Africa to accumulate wealth, to uplift their peoples, and to begin to play larger roles on the world’s stage. In this decade, and later, Africa and China are bound together synergistically in ways that cannot readily be replaced by trade, aid, or attention from the United States, India, Russia, Brazil, or Europe.

3. Why are some countries rich and others poor?

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-45
Author(s):  
Ian Goldin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
First Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Development Trajectories

‘Why are some countries rich and others poor?’ considers various theories of economic growth, including Robert Solow’s widely used 1956 model, and charts the uneven development of countries around the world from the late nineteenth century, through the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first century. Some countries, such as Japan and South Korea, have seen miraculous economic growth, whereas countries such as Argentina and Uruguay have not experienced expected levels of growth. The factors that affect development trajectories include natural resource endowments, geography, history, institutions, politics, and power. While overall levels of poverty have declined, levels of inequality are rising in almost all countries.

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