China plans to merge nine cities to create a mega city

Jan 28 2011, 7:37 am Posted by Scott Welsh

Planners in South China laid an ambitious plan to merge the nine cities in the vicinity of the Pearl River Delta. By merging the nine cities China will create the world’s biggest mega city, creating a metropolis with a population of 42 million people.
The mega city will cover part of China’s manufacturing land and stretches from Guangzhou to Shenzhen. the scheme will create a 16,000 square mile of urban area that is roughly 26 times larger that greater London geographically speaking. The area will also include Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. The cities account for tenth of the Chinese economy.
Currently the world largest mega-city is Greater Tokyo with 34 million inhabitants. Followed by Guangzhou which is home to 25 million people, Seoul ranks third with 24 million people. A city can be considered mega when population reaches 10 million.
When these cities are merged, residents than can freely travel around and use health care and other facilities located in different areas. 150 major infrastructures projects are planned in the next six years that will incorporate together transportation, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine Chinese cities at an estimated cost of 2 trillion yuan. Ma Xiangming the senior consultant for the project said that no name have been chosen for the area, and it will not be compared to Greater London or Greater Tokyo since there are cities located in the heart of the metropolis. Definitely it will not be named after one of the existing nine cities.
An express railway system will also be constructed to connect the mega city with Hong Kong. Twenty nine more rail lines with a total of 3100 miles will be added, shortening rail journeys in the urban areas to about an hour between the different city centers. This will help spread the industry and jobs more evenly in the region, and public services is distributed more fairly. Residents will use universal rail cards to access the rail lines.
Phone bills will fall by 85 percent, hospital and school facilities will be improved. Residents can then choose where to get their service by using the internet in finding the nearest hospital that is not busy. One key problem that planners are facing id the pollution of the Pearl River Delta because of industrialization will be addressed by using a united policy. Prices for gasoline and electricity will also be unified.
The southern conglomeration hopes to wrestle back the competitive advantage from growing urban areas found around Beijing and Shanghai. China also plans to move greater numbers into cities, thus creating city zones with 50 to 100 million residents plus small city clusters of 10 to 25 million people.
The northern areas around Beijing and Tianjin will be ringed with networks of high speed railways creating a super urban area known as Bohai Economic Rim with a population of 260 million. A train link will provide an axis around a network of feeder cities and the 75 mile journey will be completed in just half an hour.
According to and estimate by the British Chambers of Commerce China’s total investment in urban infrastructure is expected to hit $1 trillion, with $480 billion to be spent in high speed rail systems and $112 billion on urban transport.