Urban Planning In China

1. Summary

As the only survivor among several ancient civilizations, Chinese civilization continuously evolves and develop over a long time. Having a large amount of cities which have thousand years’ history, China offers its own perspective of building cities in historical, political and global context. Urban planning in China is currently characterized by a top down approach, high density urban development and extensive urbanization.

After 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) became the sole governing party of the country, and also took controlled of planning the cities after the wars. Due to CPC’s centralized authority, city planners have to follow some nationwide principles. As a result, cities nowadays in China are becoming more and

Millions of people have moved from rural areas into cities in recent years. A carefully controlled capitalist enterprise, which goes under the rubric of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, has enable China to become the world’s second largest economy. The blossom in economy led to the biggest real estate boom in the country. Beijing has become the city with one of the highest housing price in the world. London is also going through a real estate boom. However, unlike Beijing, where domestic buyers contributed largest part of the market, the international buyers play a bigger role in London. With nearly no plans on affordable housing, working class in Beijing find it almost impossible to buy an apartment in the city. And the rent is very high nowadays, consequently some workers are forced to leave the city. As selling the land is the main income of the government, although the central government intends to decrease the housing price, there’s no useful solutions until

Every city in China wants its own iconic building, but sometimes the city governor pursues a unique taste. Consequently, “weird buildings” started to come into people’s lives and their daily topics. In Chinese history, architecture has never been so popular before, as previous building and construction were considered as handcraft, actually there was no such a thing as “architecture” in China. Even the designer of Beijing’s Forbidden City was just doing his family business. Until today, the authority still takes control of every building project, getting the building permission is the most important part of a construction program. On the other hand, the despotic system has also some advantages. In contrast to London, an important large scale construction in Beijing such as its second airport can be proposed and implemented smoothly before the Capital Airport reached its capacity, far before the next proposal of London’s Thames Hub Airport, although the main hub Heathrow Airport is operating at 98%