- Strategies on Improving the Attraction of Small Towns in China, Solving Problems Caused by Migration   574 kb by    Qin, Mengdi & Liu, Guangpeng | liuguanpeng@hotmail.com    Short Outline This paper explores advantages and disadvantages of small towns and cities in China, with the goal to enhance the attractiveness of small towns. It suggests that small towns should be concerned with being attractive, so that they can contribute to relieving various pressures on big cities caused by migration. Abstract China's urbanization rate is 50% now driven by large-scale demographic migration. With a great number of people coming from rural to urban areas, some problems were brought such as gaps between the rich and the poor, increasing class contradictions, as well as the growing pressure on both energy and environment. Recent policies by the Chinese government and planners are some kinds of developing rural areas into cities, which may adverse impact on the inherent rural development. This paper tries to achieve a balance between rural and urban development by developing small and medium-sized towns as an Intermediate state between rural and urban areas. With the help of these towns, population could be attracted so that pressures of big cities would be alleviated and at the same time economic development would also be made. By proper developing methods, the small towns can be made good enough so that people who expect an urban life would like to live here rather than large cities. And at the same time city residents can also be attracted. The most effective way on achieving these is to create a place attractive enough by providing as much as working opportunities for everyone, building an environmental friendly and sustainable living space, and also forming a place that can provide residents good living convenience the same as that in big cities. Through the study of how to make the small towns attractive enough in planning and strategy practices, we could alleviate multiple pressures brought by population migration to large cities. For achieving a balanced, stable development and there is need develop the economy, urbanization and the whole society at the same time. The paper will be finished with how the small towns can help to solve problems caused by China[simplequote]s migration, with methods and strategies that can do some help on how to improve the attraction and innovation of small and medium towns. Also in this paper a particular small town of this kind will be selected around Shanghai, the largest city in China, as a demonstration and application of all these methods and strategies that have been mentioned. Additional, the conclusions could provide experience on future development for those countries that would have this 50% urbanization rate in the next years. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper