| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the past 30 years, China has successfully urbanized 500 million of its total population-1.3 billion. China's urbanization has come at the cost of losing some of its most fertile land, polluting 75 percent of its surface water, and tearing down most of its old cities because of its unwise spatial strategy for urban development. China's urbanization is on an unsustainable track. During the next 30 years, another half billion new immigrants will need to settle in hundreds or even thousands of new cities, but where should the government build these cities? In this paper, I argue that instead of continuing the current urbanization and development track of expanding cities in the coastal deltas and flood plains and attracting immigrants to these cities, China should pursue an alternative regional and local strategy of building new cities on the foothills at the edges of the major plains and basins.
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