Unirule Master Thoughts Class(2014) 6th Session and the Commencement Held in Beijing
Author:Unirule
Time：2015-05-29 14:14:50 Clicks:
May 10th to 11th, Unirule Master Thoughts Class(2014) 6th session and the commencement ceremony was held in Beijing. Professor ZHOU Qiren from National School of Development at Peking University(NSD) and Professor ZI Zhongyun from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences attended the ceremony.
On the morning of May 10th, Professor ZHOU Qiren spoke on “Mobility, Concentration and the Economic Growth”. Professor ZHOU presented his observation of the urbanisation over the last two years. He thought there were two things that mattered the most, i.e., mobility and concentration. By comparing and analysing the data of US, UK, Japan, France, and Russia, he concluded that the population moved to cities and a rather big proportion of the economic contribution was made by a comparatively small proportion of the land.
In regard to the understanding of cities and the density of population, Professor ZHOU made an example from Manhattan, New York. He mentioned that the density of Manhattan in the night soared to 27,000 per square meters, whereas that of the day accounts dozens of thousands. The annual GDP per square meter accounts to USD1.6 billion.Such high density of population and the massive economic activities are attributed to the reasonable city planning: the compounded night light index of Manhattan ranked among the top cities in the world, the traffic planning was remarkable where a turning can be expected in a minute’s drive and an avenue in two to three minutes, which constituted about 120 crossings in total for Manhattan. Americans learned to plan their cities in the fashion of grids from Europeans as the grids themselves facilitates the fast mobility of goods and services, as well as information.As there was no main road in Manhattan, the underground transportation system is highly developed. Professor ZHOU Qiren concluded that Chinese were used to the low density of cities in planning whereas the urban development required high density in order to facilitate the high speed exchange of information, goods, and services.
Some people believed that high density would lead to crowdedness and congestions, and Professor ZHOU thought this was a false statement. Thanks to the low density, the city would have to sprawl in a larger area, making the cost for commuting higher. The so-called “sleeping cities” would spring up where people work in a place and live somewhere else, which resulted in traffic congestions and low efficiency of life utilities in the cities.
Professor ZHOU Qiren thought the concept of urbanisation in China was incoherent with that in other countries. Professor Zhou thought several steps should be taken as urbanisation in the Chinese sense focused mainly on the planning and zoning in terms of administration. He thought the next step should be to put the status of the cities as administrative zones first, and then to stress the importance of people, and to let entrepreneurs do what they are best at. Only when a proper stage is provided for people can we expect cities to play a proper role in the development in the nest one or two decades.
