How should the connotation of new urbanization be comprehensively understood?

Although urbanization was a phenomenon that appeared earlier in developed countries, different countries have different national conditions, and their development paths and forms of expression also have their own characteristics. China has summarized the experience and lessons of urbanization development at home and abroad and put forward the development approach of new urbanization. This is an innovative exploration of the path and realization methods of urbanization based on China's specific national conditions.

Since reform and opening up, China's urbanization has entered a period of rapid development and has shown three main characteristics: First, government-led urbanization promoted the rapid development of urbanization, but it also brought problems such as inefficient resource allocation, waste of land resources, and a heavy burden of local debt. Second, a large number of surplus rural laborers went to cities and towns to seek new employment opportunities, but because China long implemented a household registration system that separated urban and rural areas, most of these people did not truly become urban citizens, causing land urbanization to be faster than population urbanization. Third, the development of small towns played a certain role in driving the local economy, absorbing employment, and increasing local residents' income, but there were also problems such as resource waste, weak infrastructure, and environmental pollution. The scale of urban development was not large, making it difficult to improve land use efficiency, achieve economies of scale, and form strong centers of economic growth that could radiate and drive the development of larger regions.

Although urbanization in developed countries promoted economic and social change, the accompanying "urban problems" have always troubled governments and society. First, traffic congestion. Traffic congestion is a worldwide urban problem. Many cities have increased capacity through technical and facility improvements such as widening roads, building elevated roads, constructing light rail, and laying subways, or have implemented traffic control through measures such as driving restrictions and controlling individual transportation, but most cities have not been able to completely and effectively solve this problem. Second, environmental pollution. During the urbanization process in developed countries, serious environmental problems appeared. Urban populations and economic activities are dense, and bacteria, viruses, and microorganisms can easily spread and breed through the atmosphere, water bodies, soil, food, and human interaction, endangering human health. Third, land prices rose too quickly. The concentration of population and economic activities brought land appreciation, but it also led to rapid growth in land prices, thereby producing serious real estate bubbles. Fourth, urban poverty. Excess urban population was accompanied by insufficient employment opportunities, and together with some unreasonable institutions, this widened the gap between rich and poor.

China's new urbanization includes both a summary of the experience and lessons of our past urbanization path and reflection on and avoidance of the problems that appeared in the process of Western urbanization. It also includes new ideas for the prospects of future urbanization and is a new conception of China's urbanization model. The connotation of new urbanization is very rich, among which the four points of people-oriented development, low-carbon conservation, optimized layout, and leadership by new technologies are very important.

People-oriented development. At the philosophical level, people-oriented development is a sublation of traditional urbanization. Traditional urbanization took the increase of material wealth as both the means of realization and the goal pursued. New urbanization takes the urbanization of people as its core and promotes people's all-round development and social fairness, justice, and harmony. People are the main body of urbanization. At the theoretical level, people-oriented development is a breakthrough from the traditional urban-rural dual structure. New urbanization highlights urban-rural coordination and mutual benefit between industry and agriculture, emphasizes equal exchange of urban and rural factors and balanced allocation of public resources, coordinated development of large, medium, and small cities and small towns, and coordinated advancement of urbanization and new rural construction, abandoning the development thinking of "urban bias" and "neglecting rural areas." At the practical level, people-oriented development is, on the basis of cautious consideration of China's urbanization conditions, an effective way to realize the urbanization of people to the greatest extent and to protect human rights to the greatest extent. Under the special national conditions of many people and little land and a huge rural population, we should in an orderly way promote the flow of rural population to cities and towns and the citizenization of the population transferred from agriculture, steadily promote the coverage of urban basic public services over the permanent resident population, and fully respect farmers' right to independently choose where to live in urban or rural areas, becoming urban where suitable and rural where suitable.

Low-carbon conservation. New urbanization fully integrates the concept of ecological civilization into the process of urban development and builds low-carbon and conservation-oriented modes of production, life, and consumption. First, economic activities should be conservation-oriented and intensive. Industrial development and urban construction should use resources such as land, water, and energy in a conservation-oriented and intensive way, strengthen resource recycling, develop environment-friendly industries, promote environment-friendly production transformation, and reduce pollution emissions. Second, develop green transportation, accelerate the development of new energy and low-emission transportation tools, improve the public transportation system, and increase the proportion of public transportation trips. Third, promote green buildings and maximize building energy efficiency. Finally, advocate a simple, moderate, civilized, and harmonious lifestyle, slow living and simple travel, and cultivate a green and low-carbon ecological culture.

Optimized layout. New urbanization is based on the optimization of the urban system and the internal spatial structure, layout, and form of cities. According to the carrying capacity of resources and the environment, optimize the spatial layout and build a scientific and reasonable urban system; according to the stage of urbanization development, optimize the internal spatial structure of cities, implement cluster-based development, reasonably position the functions of clusters, increase internal connections within clusters, reduce commuting between clusters, and build a comprehensive urban transportation system with multi-center clusters as nodes; conform to urban development trends and the new requirements of ecological civilization, and through planning guidance and market operation, cultivate distinctive satellite cities (towns), disperse the functions of central urban areas, improve urban production and living efficiency, and promote the benign integration of cities and the ecological environment.

Leadership by technology. Urban development cycles are closely linked to economic and technological cycles, and the urbanization process inevitably bears the imprint of the industrial and technological progress of its time. The steam revolution and the later electric and chemical revolutions caused a large number of industries and people to concentrate in cities, and the number and scale of cities increased rapidly, entering the development stage of the "production-oriented city." After the 20th century, Fordism, based on division of labor and specialization, emerged, realized mass production, and formed a rapid transportation network, promoting urban diffusion and bringing about a transformation of cities toward placing equal emphasis on production and services. After that, information technology and microelectronics technology were widely applied, and post-Fordism, characterized by flexible specialization and lean production, emerged, enabling cities to complete the leap from the production-oriented type to the service-and-consumption-oriented type. At present, new-generation information technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, and mobile internet are profoundly changing the production and lifestyle of cities and generating many corresponding urban development models, of which the smart city is one. New urbanization should apply the concept of the smart city in urban planning and construction, organically combine technology and people, establish an urban smart management system, enhance the intelligence and precision of urban construction and management, promote the efficient operation of urban production, circulation, and services, and promote the healthy and sustainable development of cities.