The Paths to Improve China’s Urbanization Strategy

Abstract

Based on The CPC Central Committee’s Proposals for Formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035, this paper proposes three paths to improve China’s urbanization strategy. First, the emphasis should be shifted from demographic urbanization to farmers’ citizenization, thus clearing the barriers against free flow of population and productive factors, and advancing equal rights of urban residents so that the city benefits are equally shared. Second, the metropolitanization strategy should be implemented to eliminate scale- and location-related discrimination, promote the efficient agglomeration of population and productive factors at different levels of metropolitan areas and develop global cities and world-class urban agglomerations. Third, the strategy of building high-quality livable cities should be implemented, by following the new trend of building green, healthy, resilient, smart, innovative and compact cities, and improving place qualities.

Keywords

• Urbanization strategy
• new-type urbanization
• livable city
• urban renewal
• metropolitanization