East Asia & Pacific » China » Chengdu, Sichuan
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China Challenge resolution: Chengdu example |
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| China confronts a huge challenge. In the next 20 years, 250 million people will move into towns. That's a rate of 1 million people a month, 30,000 each day. China needs to build a city of 30,000 inhabitants, 12,000 homes, each and every day for the next 20 years, or even longer.
Is China doing it right? It doesn't look that way. They are simply copying western mistakes in urban planning and expanding them. Ian Johnson's article in the New York Times (November 9, 2013) is a good example of these mistakes. China is reproducing the post war Euro-American banlieus from which came a specific social-neurosis disease: The ‘Sarcellite’ (Paris suburban new-town Sarcelles) A radically different approach is required: an approach of their own; Sowed from their past and projected into the future. Chengdu is a good example of the Metro-Matrix approach to a China city and to its explosive development: It's a way to have economic efficiency, social equality and environmentally sustainable development for the future. Just out of The Art of Shaping the Metropolis, McGraw Hill. China Authorities could make good use of it. |
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