As the capital of the nation with the world's fastest growing
economy, Beijing has been a treasure trove of opportunities for
international profit hunters, as well as for the vast number of
Chinese who aspire to a better life. For these people, the economic
charm of Beijing is attributed mainly to its status as the hub of
the country's political power.
According to a ranking published in 2004 by the Institute of
Policy and Management of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
is the third most habitable of 50 Chinese cities surveyed, coming
right after Shenzhen and Guangzhou. This ranking is based on six
criteria: present economic development, economic potential, social
welfare network, environment, quality of life and daily living
facilities.
Another livability survey conducted by Business Weekly
and the Horizon Research Group and published in February 2005 was
conducted using face-to-face interviews with 3,212 residents of ten
cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenyang,
Xi'an, Jinan, Dalian and Xiamen.
One-fourth of the respondents who favored Beijing as the most
habitable city attributed this to the city's advantages as the
nation's capital. However, in terms of environment Beijing dropped
to seventh place, and was ranked as the noisiest city with the
poorest afforestation.
For Beijing's 15 million residents, the biggest complaints are
about the exceedingly high traffic volume and high population
density.
A recent online habitability survey conducted by
www.beijing.gov.cn drew 9,080 voters in two months. Most complaints
from these respondents were about the city's traffic and migrant
population management. Those who live in the central city said
Beijing suffered from "five too's": too many people, too much
traffic, too costly housing, too high cost of living and too bad
climate.
Most of these complaints are connected with the city's unusually
high population density: 14,694 people per square kilometer in its
urban areas, compared with 8,811 for New York, 8,071 for Paris and
4,554 for London.
Since 1949, Beijing's downtown area has expanded 4.9 times; in
the same period, the inner-city population has nearly
quadrupled.
Wu Liangyong, a professor at Tsinghua
University's School of Architecture and academician at both the
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of
Engineering (CAE), attributes this phenomenon to the city's mode of
urban planning and development.
The Beijing government drafted and implemented its first urban
plan from 1950 to 1954 with the help of Soviet experts and based on
Moscow's urban planning. This plan was based on the "spider city"
model in which the central areas, surrounded by concentric ring
roads, perform important employment functions in such sectors as
administration, business and commerce, culture and education.
Residential areas are mainly on the outskirts, with a growing
number of satellite towns to provide housing for people working in
the downtown areas.
The old city -- the area within the second ring road -- was the
center of urban planning and development in the 1950s. It occupied
an area of 600 square kilometers, was able to accommodate six
million people, and had several satellite towns in the suburban
areas. A transportation network consisting of the first, second,
third and fourth ring roads linked by radial lines was incorporated
in the 1954 draft.
The second round of urban planning started in 1958. For
political reasons, there was a trend toward weakening the status
and function of big cities and reducing the gap between urban and
rural areas. During this period, the population in the central
areas fell from 6 million to 3.5 million and the number of
satellite towns swelled.
In 1993, the State Council approved the Beijing Urban
Comprehensive Plan (1991–2010). Emphasis has since been placed on
diluting the excessively concentrated downtown population and
economy. Construction has been more focused on the suburban areas
and the satellite towns, intended to be relatively independent of
the inner-city area, are more carefully and strategically
planned.
Traffic congestion inside the third ring road is the biggest
headache to Beijing, with that area contributing more than 60
percent of the entire city's traffic volume. The area within the
second ring road contributes a whopping 47 percent, meaning that 6
percent of the city's area creates nearly half of its traffic.
Previous planners failed to anticipate the tremendous growth
that would take place in the capital. The Beijing Urban
Comprehensive Plan (1991–2010), approved by the State Council in
1993, predicted that Beijing's population would be 15 million by
2010. But the actual population had reached 14.9 million by the end
of 2004, six years ahead of schedule.
The annual population increase was 2.2 percent from 1990 to
2003. At this rate, Beijing's population will reach 21 million by
2020, posing a daunting task for the city's urban planners.
On January 12 this year, the State Council approved the Beijing
Urban Comprehensive Plan (2004–2020).
Unlike its predecessors, which focused on the construction of
economic centers, the plan for the first time incorporates concept
of building a "habitable Beijing."
According to the new plan, the optimum total population is set
to be around 18 million by 2020. This means massive population
relocation.
The 2004–2020 plan incorporates such ideas as "developing new
cities and several urban function centers" and "stringently
limiting the scale of urban construction in the central areas."
According to the plan, 1.1 million of the people now living in
the central areas -- nearly half of them in the old city -- will
move outside the fourth ring road in the next 15 years. They will
join the more than 3 million expected in the future to be lodged in
the new satellite cities, which are designed to accommodate 3.5
million, and in the outskirt areas, which can handle 1.4 million
people.
On March 24, the 19th Session of the Beijing Municipal People's
Congress' 12th Standing Committee enacted a regulation designed to
limit the population in the downtown areas and encourage more
residents to move to the suburbs.
It is the first time Beijing has facilitated its urban planning
through legislature. By 2020, only about 10 percent of the total
population, or 1.9 million people, will be living in the downtown
areas.
This time, Beijing is determined to carry on the saga of
improving its habitability through to a desirable end.
(China.org.cn by Wind Gu April 4, 2005)