- Emerging Third Tier Metropolises in Central China – sustainable, educated, niche, clean, aesthetic – a recipe to build and sustain their gravity to balance urbanization in China?    click here to open paper content1502 kb
by    Rau, Stefan | stefanrau@metrosynergies.com   click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper
Short Outline
Emerging third tier cities ought to be magnets with sustained force avoiding polluting industries. The plan shown integrates urban, economic & eco-efficient development highlighting the potential of sustainability as strategic competitive advantage.
Abstract
Emerging third tier metropolises in central China – sustainable, educated, niche, clean, aesthetic – a recipe to build and sustain their gravity to balance urbanization in China?

Emerging third tier regional Metropolises away from the coastal regions and away from the second tier cities play a critical role for the development of the inner land and for the management of the overall urbanization in China. These cities grow from market towns and regional administrative centers to metropolises with one to three million residents by 2020. The source for this growth is migration from the rural surroundings. The challenge for this development is to retain the population in light of opportunities residents may see in the coastal megalopolises and move away in a second step, as can often be observed today. What economic basis and which other factors may contribute to a sustained success of these cities? How can they become competitive and/or complementary in China’s new economic geography? In order to attract people and jobs, is it enough to create local value from endogenous resources, locate vocational training and universities and build a cluster in an economic niche? Could it become a strategic advantage to develop an environmentally clean image through high environmental quality standards, beautiful landscaping and urban design? Can clean production and renewable energy industries become a strategy to develop these cities and realize a future of clean industries inside China?

Along a case in Nanyang city for which the author made a strategic urban development plan, this paper discusses the potentials to succeed (or fail) of such a strategy of eco-efficient urban and economic development in light of current trends of labour migration dynamics and industrial relocations from China’s south and east to northern and western China. A guiding method for integrating urban planning, economic development planning and eco-efficiency planning has been developed to evaluate and monitor the city’s future economic, social and ecological performance.

Keywords
third tier cities in china, urban and economic development, eco-efficicency, clean city image, green is economic advantage
Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2010: Sustainable City - Developing World
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