Global Cities Blog
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It was a great pleasure to return to Lingang in November and participate in the Healthy Cities Roundtable as facilitator. The city is an extraordinary development and its ambition is without parallel. The vision for the city is to become many things, including a major tourist destination, a high-tech and creative industries specialist, a home of international culture to name but a few. China is a dynamic economy in which almost always the apparently impossible can come to pass. One of the reasons for this is that China recognises that if it is to compete in the long-term it cannot consider itself a developing economy, but it must move to address the issues that many major industrialised countries are trying to address. Hence the focus on ‘Healthy Cities’. There are many terms being developed here: Policy-makers and business leaders the world-over are discussing:
Smart Cities, Future Cities, Green Cities, Intelligent Cities, Sustainable Cities, Planet Cities, Eco-Cities, Healthy Cities and Liveable Cities.
The term is not of great importance the significant point about the Lingang Healthy Cities roundtable is that it takes account of the extraordinary pace of China’s development – e.g. according to McKinsey, China will have 221 cities with a population of 1 million people by 2030 – Lingang New City is a reflection of these urbanising trends and in policy terms it has the opportunity to lead the way for many Chinese cities.
We know that China can inspire awe in terms of its investment in infrastructure but this policy development in Lingang suggests that China is moving towards the understanding that prioritising the softer elements of urban development are now of greatest importance.
Perhaps in the first instance the ‘healthy city’ might be the liveable city which prizes all the attributes of liveability, walkability, work-life balance, cultural celebration, of being international and cosmopolitan.
In their recent book Two Dragon Heads – reviewing the future for Chinese cities – Shahid Yusuf and Kaoru Nabeshima noted that “the innovativeness of the megacities will depend in part on their openness to ideas and people, and on liveability”. This is the priority for every city in the 21st century – can China take the lead?
