China urbanization review : balancing urban transformation and spatial inclusion

Roughly one out of every 10 people in the world today is a resident of a Chinese city. The United Nations projects that the number of Chinese urban dwellers will increase from over 622 million today to over 1 billion in circa 2030. How China manages its urban transformation will have considerable bearing not only for the Chinese economy and society, but for the world at large. Has China's urbanization amplified the pace of economic prosperity? Has urbanization connected poor people with prosperity and enhanced living conditions across the country's vast landscape? What are priorities for public policy and investment to generate win wins for urban efficiency and social inclusion? This 'urbanization review' helps answer these questions by diagnosing the health of China's urban economy and urbanization process, highlighting how policy challenges vary across the urban portfolio. China has embraced the urbanization process that has accompanied its dramatic economic transformation. By investing in the institutional foundations, Chinese policymakers have sown the seeds to amplify the gains from urbanization. An urban land market has been created, and regulations standardizing the assignment of land use rights have been established. And while the urban planning law in the 1980s aimed at controlling the size of large cities, the 10th five-year plan (2001-05) and onwards instead chose to emphasize the synergistic development of China's large, medium, and small cities. In places such as Changsha, Zhuzhou, and Xiangtan, which have a combined population of 13 million, planning guidelines have enforced land use rights and promoted intensification in central areas, while expressways and railways have improved connectivity among these cities and with their rural hinterlands.