Chinese cities much bigger than previously thought

[muppet]

Surprise! 260 million people live in just 15 Chinese cities

by Charles Riley @CRrileyCNN


https://supermouse.blog/2016/07/18/t...highrise-city/


China's largest cities can feel like endless, sprawling landscapes of construction sites, tower cranes and crowded streets.
But are these mega-cities even bigger than we thought?

OECD researchers argue in a new report that many more people live in China's largest urban centers than previously estimated. Instead of six cities
with more than 10 million people, they say, China has 15.

The researchers arrived at the larger numbers by ignoring traditional city limits, and instead using density measures and transportation patterns to
define new municipal boundaries, or "functional urban areas."

The results are dramatic. Shanghai goes from a city of 22.3 million to one of 34 million. The population of Guangzhou, in southern China, more than
doubles from 11.1 million to 25 million.


Read more here:


http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/21/news...ion/index.html

[muppet]

Full ranking of cities, and their estimated population (2015):

1. Shanghai (34 million)


https://supermouse.blog/tag/shanghai/


2.Guangzhou (25 million)


View from the top of Guangzhou (Canton Tower) by Stephen H, on Flickr



Beijing (24.9 million)


https://depositphotos.com/68132777/s...rial-view.html


4. Shenzhen (23.3 million)


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...8&postcount=15


5. Wuhan (19 million)


http://wx3.sinaimg.cn


6. Chengdu (18.1 million)


Chris Zwolle, http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...postcount=3180



7. Chongqing (17 million)



ChongQing by Mendo Wong, on Flickr


8. Tianjin (15.4 million)




9. Hangzhou (13.4 million)


钱江新城.杭州 by cs 1867, on Flickr

10. Xian (12.9 million)


www.navjot-singh.com

The rest:

11. Changzhou (12.4 million)
12. Shantou (12 million)
13. Nanjing (11.7 million)
14. Jinan (11 million)
15. Harbin (10.5 million)

[Centropolis]

it's funny, people speak of hangzhou as if its some sleep country town it seems (from a shanghai perspective) but it's larger than chicago.

[dubu]

All the skyscrapers on the west coast could make a Chinese city.

[The North One]

Guangzhou is bigger than New York but I doubt the vast majority of people in the west could name or recognize the city or even knows that it exists. Crazy.

[dubu]

They need the skyscrapers more then we do. That's why Hong Kong has the most skyscrapers then any city in the world. I wonder why that city isn't on the list, maybe it just looks real crazy but doesn't have a lot of people compared to the other cities.

It's kinda funny by going by what China calls a skyscraper my state doesn't have a skyscraper, I think.

[jd3189]

Many of these cities resemble some of those Star Wars urban landscapes. China is truly the great dragon when it comes to cities.

[Hot Rod]

keep in mind these are urban areas, the cities themselves are much 'smaller'. Urban areas are continuous development zones and in China typically include the municipality itself + suburbs + counties where this all is usually administered from the main municipality.

this is how Chengdu, a city of 3.5 million people has an urban area of 17 million which is larger than its metro population of 14 million. In the US our CSAs would be synonymous since US urban areas do allow for political 'shaping' (heres to you Chicago-Milwaukee) whereas China does not (in China, it would all just belong to Chicago).

[muppet]

Actually it's a mix of the two - the new one only counts urban densities, not political boundaries. China has city municipalities which one could loosely call a metro. These municipalities will often contain surrounding towns and cities, inflating Chongqing for example to 35 million people in an area the size of Belgium.

However, as you mention, they can also - absurdly - cut out large chunks of the city, and definitely anything that's been conjoined. For example Shanghai that's merged with Suzhou, or Shenzhen-Dongguan, Changzhou-Wuxi, Guangzhou-Foshan etc, each of whom are considered separate by jurisdiction.


www.newgeography.com

(The same applies to London in a way, whereby the city proper boundaries take in large amounts of empty rural areas, but also cut out large areas of urbanity).


A third spanner in the works is that 'rural' jurisdictions in these areas are often not rural at all, and only in name due to legislative purposes.

For example Huaxi 'village', Hangzhou is classed as rural (despite its factories, tower blocks, million $ villas and supertall)


http://worldkings.org

The rural jurisdiction is basically in place around Chinese cities so that the surrounding farmer's don't all move to the cities en masse. It requires that the people register where they live rurally, and only own land there regardless of where they work or how much they earn. The result absurdly has been that the 'farmers' have brought the city into the countryside - factories, rich sprawl and apartment blocks have instead cropped up in the 'rural' areas around every city for hundreds of miles. Many of the 'farmers' (read: city workers) made rich and hiring out their land to new farmers:

These 'farmers apartments' go on for hundreds of km outside the eastern cities that operate such laws, and the reasoning behind municipality boundaries - it's pretty much Chinese style, high density sprawl:


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=244200

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=244200







The city also spreads by taking over the only land it's allowed to -rural - but in effect making it urban in all but name. This slowly knits up the nodes until the area becomes built up and reclassified as urban.



These terraforming areas will now be counted:




In short the new measures get rid of municipal inflation that adds separate cities and empty countryside, but includes conjoined cities and high density sprawl.

[muppet]

The way the new data works is they got rid of all boundaries altogether, whether city proper or municipality, and only counted densities regardless of jurisdictional categories. Then the transport links to any new dormitories (read: terraforming outskirts). This gets rid of inflating figures that municipalities do, but also includes those city folk/ commuters that get cut out. This is why Chongqing overall has gone from 35 million down to 17 million, but its 'city count' has gone from 12 million up to 17 million.


http://english.cqnews.net/html/2017-...t_42313303.htm

Overall though they found most Chinese cities increased in number this way rather than decreased, mostly due to conjoined, fully merged cities (rather than Farmers apartments) getting rid of their boundaries, often delineated by a specific street.

This connection between Suzhou (left) and western Shanghai (right), whereby you can walk between city centres the entire way surrounded by streets and buildings, is considered of neither city, but holds 2.5 million urbanites nevertheless - finally counted together.



http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpo...69&postcount=5

[giallo]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

it's funny, people speak of hangzhou as if its some sleep country town it seems (from a shanghai perspective) but it's larger than chicago.

Yeah. I'm kind of shocked to learn that Hangzhou has that many people. In Shanghai, it's known as that city with the lake that you can day-trip to.

[SLO]

Those cities are interesting to view and visit, but way to crowded. Amazing development though.

[chris08876]

I wonder if the U.S. will every get up to that point where our cities look like Chinese cities. Like if the U.S. ever reached 800 million, if our urban areas would start to resemble China's.

Likewise for the suburbs. Their suburbs are so dense, with tower blocks.

[chris08876]

I'm referring to development patterns in other words.

[montréaliste]

I just want to commend muppet for his contributions to this forum. These striking samples of urbanization in China reveal much about the powerful forces that have transformed the country into the economic and political behemoth that now dominates our planet in many ways.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by chris08876

I wonder if the U.S. will every get up to that point where our cities look like Chinese cities. Like if the U.S. ever reached 800 million, if our urban areas would start to resemble China's.

God I hope not. Fortunately, for China, their population will start dropping in the next few decades.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by chris08876

I wonder if the U.S. will every get up to that point where our cities look like Chinese cities. Like if the U.S. ever reached 800 million, if our urban areas would start to resemble China's.

Likewise for the suburbs. Their suburbs are so dense, with tower blocks.

Let's hope not.

[Austinlee]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing, Muppet. Considering world population is planned to level off around +/- 10 billion, these are likely to be the biggest cities that Earth will ever see. India is the only other country that will even have a chance to rival them.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by JManc

God I hope not. Fortunately, for China, their population will start dropping in the next few decades.

That's what I was thinking.

China has urbanized right up to the point where they are forecast to lose a couple hundred million people by the end of the century.

[Ant131531]

Originally Posted by Austinlee

Awesome! Thanks for sharing, Muppet. Considering world population is planned to level off around +/- 10 billion, these are likely to be the biggest cities that Earth will ever see. India is the only other country that will even have a chance to rival them.

There could always be scenarios where populations have to centralize in a few urbanized areas and could rival these cities. Look at Tokyo. It's a small island country of about 130 million people, yet has the largest urbanized area in population in the world. Same with Korea. 25 million people in Seoul despite there only being about 50 million people living in Korea.

Wouldn't be surprised if there are enormous cities in Africa in a century, particularly cites like Lagos.