Urbanization must not be turned into uniformity between urban and rural areas

Urbanization is a natural historical process. In regions at different stages of development and with different development conditions, the orientation, content and priorities of urbanization all differ. China is a large developing country with a huge population and a vast territory, and the levels of economic development and the conditions for urbanization vary greatly from place to place, so advancing urbanization should have different emphases and breakthrough directions in different regions. Comrade Xi Jinping pointed out at the ninth meeting of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs that “advancing urbanization is not about turning urban and rural areas into uniformity.” However, some places, disregarding their own conditions, blindly copy others, and disregarding economic laws, rush headlong into action, giving rise to chaos such as relocating villages and merging towns, building houses to create cities, and forcing farmers to move into urban buildings. This must be taken very seriously and resolutely corrected.

⟦NL> The significance of urbanization for economic development lies in the fact that the industrial and commercial activities it concentrates have an effect of increasing returns to scale per unit of geographical space. Only urbanization with an effect of increasing returns to scale is healthy urbanization; otherwise it is unsustainable, deformed urbanization. And in regions with different development conditions, the content of urbanization corresponding to increasing returns to scale is different.

In the less developed central and western regions, industry and commerce are underdeveloped and job opportunities are few. In these regions, the main content of urbanization is the cultivation and concentration of urban industrial and commercial industries and the corresponding creation of job opportunities. The focus of advancing urbanization lies in attracting investment and expanding employment. Simply relocating villages and merging towns, with farmers passively moving into urban buildings, cannot bring increasing returns to scale. This is because the local area lacks non-agricultural job opportunities, and the surplus agricultural labor force still has to go out to work; and as for agricultural employment, because the distance between residence and agricultural production sites is widened, the commuting time and cost of agricultural labor increase, causing a decline in agricultural productivity, a decline in farmers' quality of life and an increase in costs.

In the more developed southeastern coastal regions, industrial and commercial industries are clearly concentrated, jobs are relatively abundant, and a large number of migrant workers from other places are attracted to work there. Because migrant workers send most of their income back to their hometowns, the scale of the consumer market in areas where such migrant workers are relatively concentrated is noticeably smaller relative to the scale of GDP output, and the development of urban service industries lags behind. In advancing urbanization in these regions, the main task should be to guide migrant workers and their families to move into towns and cities as a whole, achieve full urban citizenship, promote the expansion of consumption scale and the upgrading of consumption structure, and drive the concentration and development of urban service industries. Therefore, the focus of advancing urbanization in these regions lies in providing low-cost housing and public services for migrant workers who are able to move with their whole families, and completing the transformation of industrial concentration areas into modern towns and cities.

For small and medium-sized cities in the interior, the urban scale and endogenous growth momentum are still relatively limited, and the economic foundation for urban development is not yet solid. The direction of urbanization lies in the cultivation and concentration of urban industrial and commercial industries, and in the expansion of space in the main urban area and the increase of economic density. But in reality, some small and medium-sized cities are keen on real estate development, and in some places the planned population size of new residential towns even exceeds that of the main urban area. It should be recognized that the development of new residential towns requires a certain population and market scale to drive it. Without sufficient population and market scale, basic urban services are difficult to provide effectively, so despite complete infrastructure and superior housing conditions, such places are not livable. The result is inevitably insufficient population concentration, idle housing, and even the formation of “empty cities” and “ghost cities.”

For larger-scale central cities, especially megacities, because the density of economic concentration in the main urban area is too high and the scale too large, the problem of urban congestion is becoming increasingly prominent. The main direction of urbanization lies in building new towns and satellite towns, and realizing the transformation from a single-center megacity to a multi-center metropolitan area and city cluster. The development practice of metropolitan areas and city clusters around the world shows that the development model of single-function satellite towns springing up everywhere often fails to relieve the pressure of urban congestion because the commuting distance among employment, residence and services is too great, and instead leads to a sharp increase in urban operating costs and a decline in development performance. The development model of large comprehensive new towns integrating employment, residence and services is conducive both to relieving and diverting the population and industries of the main urban area and to the formation of secondary urban centers and the concentration of service industries, and can greatly shorten commuting distances, effectively reduce urban congestion and operating costs, and enhance urban competitiveness.