Urban Sustainability in China: Key Concepts

Defining Sustainability

  • Keywords related to population, scale, and globalization.

Major Issues of Urban Sustainability in China

  • Air quality, greenhouse gas emission, solid waste, water scarcity and pollution.
  • Land use efficiency and transportation.
  • Planning interventions: balancing growth and sustainability.

Context: Population and Policy

  • China's population in 2024: 1,419,321,2771,419,321,277.
  • Comparison with Japan (123,753,040123,753,040) and India (1,450,935,7911,450,935,791).
  • Aging society problems.
  • One-child policy (1980s), two-child policy (2016), and three-child policy (2021).
  • Reasons for the one-child policy and its changes.
  • Impact of the family plan on population reduction (approximately 300 million).
  • Healthy fertility rate: 2.
  • Problems with abortions of female fetuses due to the one-child policy.
  • Decline in fertility rates due to urbanization and women's education.
  • Reduction in childbearing age female population is projected to reduce by 44% until 2030
  • The number of working-age people began shrinking in 2012
  • Population fell by about 2.08 million in 2023 to 1.409 billion. The birth rate in 2023 was 6.39 per 1,000 people.

Theorists for one-child policy

  • Marxism theorists
  • Demographers

Context: Scale and Diversity

  • Urbanization in mega-cities versus medium to small-sized cities.
  • Unprecedented urbanization scale in different development phases.
  • Diversity in sustainability approaches.
  • City Clusters and Agglomeration benefits
  • Rural-to-urban migration.
  • Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Distribution
  • In-situ urbanization
  • Land development patterns: leapfrog, urban sprawl.
  • Rapid urbanization and motorization.
  • New towns can be new CBDs but can also be ghost cities.
  • Shrinking cities and depopulation.
  • Poverty alleviation efforts (“脱贫攻坚”).
  • Modernity exemplified by projects like the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge.
  • Globalisation.

Major Issues of Urban Sustainability in China

  • Air Pollution
    • Causes include motor vehicles and power stations.
    • China's energy from coal
    • Main pollutants: SO<em>2SO<em>2, NO</em>xNO</em>x, and CO.
    • Territorial approach to pollution reduction.
    • Consumer spending habits.
  • Greenhouse Gas Emissions
    • Challenges in climate change.
    • High per capita energy consumption and CO2CO_2 emissions.
    • High coal consumption in primary energy
    • Regional coal-control targets.
    • Commitments to peak CO2CO_2 emissions before 2030.
  • Water Scarcity and Quality
    • Water availability is 1/3 of the world average.
    • Water sources in Hong Kong.
    • Imported, Rainwater and Sea Water
  • Solid Waste
    • Soil contamination risks.
    • Mismanaged plastic waste.
    • Plastic Waste Imports and Exports
  • Urban Land Use Efficiency
    • Sprawl results in thinly spread populations.
  • Transportation
    • Guangzhou Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System.
    • EV market and sustainable transport transformation.

Planning Interventions for Urban Sustainability

  • Main Function Area Plan
    • Divides national territory into prioritized, optimized, constrained, and forbidden development areas.
    • “Scientific development/geographic approach” with various index terms and factors.
  • Eco-Cities
    • New towns with technological and ecological features.
    • Low-carbon eco-cities.
    • Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city.
    • Sustainability Strategy Report indicators.
    • Sustainability targets in Five-Year Plans (FYPs).