Slicing a Big Cake

By YUAN YUAN

Slicing a Big Cake

By YUAN YUAN

(Left) PACKED SUBWAY:Commuters make their way in a passage linking Guomao stations on Subway Line 1 and Line 10 in the morning rush hour

Beijing undergoes huge population burdens and needs to conduct urban planning in a more rational way

“Every morning when I wake up and think of taking the subway,I feel like I’m preparing to enter a nightmare,” said Wang Zili,a secretary with a Beijing-based foreign company who lives in Tiantongyuan, the largest residential community near the North Fifth Ring Road of Beijing in suburban Changping District, home to 230,000 residents.

Wang moved into this community in 2003. “At that time, the traf fi c was much better. Although there were traf fi c jams during the rush hour, I could manage to drive to the of fi ce on time,” Wang said. “Since 2005, it has been getting worse and sometimes I was stranded on the road for an hour during the rush hour.”

Wang works near Jianguomen in Chaoyang District, along the downtown East Second Ring Road. The traf fi c became such a headache for her that she fi nally rented an apartment closer to her of fi ce. “I was afraid I would be late for work every day,” Wang said.

She moved back to Tiantongyuan in September 2007 when Subway Line 5, with Tiantongyuan as the northern terminal station, opened.

“I thought the subway would make things much easier. It is free from traffic jams and I can at least control my time. Since it is the fi rst station of the route, I thought I could even get a seat,” said Wang.

However, the fi rst day she took the subway Wang was caught completely off guard.“I knew it would be crowded since this community is huge, but I never imagined it would be so awful,” Wang said.

People were waiting in zigzag lines outside to enter the station during the morning rush hour. Then, commuters spent more than 10 minutes waiting again in long lines to get on the train.

The situation has remained unchanged.

“As soon as the door opens, the train gets packed in seconds. It is a fight just to take the subway. Sometimes, I have to wait three trains to come before it’s my turn to board,”Wang said.

Wang’s is a normal commuting story in Beijing as the population pressure has become worse in recent years. Compared with Wang, Liu Siqi, who lives around Xierqi Station on Subway Line 13 in Haidian District is much luckier since his employer, Baidu.com, operator the largest Chinese Internet search engine, moved from Zhongguancun, located along the Northwest Fourth Ring Road in the district,to the Shangdi Information Industrial Base,a newly built hi-tech area outside the Fifth Ring Road in the north in November 2009.Liu can now get to his of fi ce within 20 minutes by walking.

“Before my of fi ce moved here, I had the same terrible experiences taking subways and buses. The situation on buses is even worse,” said Liu.

Many of Liu’s workmates moved to apartments near the office. The growing demand has boosted the rents and prices of nearby houses.

Now, the average price of apartments near the Shangdi Information Industrial Base is about 30,000 yuan ($4,632) per square meter, while just three years ago, it was 10,000 ($1,544).

“The development of the hi-tech base de fi nitely contributes to the high prices,” Liu said.

At the same time, with local operations of multinationals, such as IBM, moving from the downtown East Third Ring Road to the suburban North Fourth Ring Road, the rents of apartments around Pangu Plaza, where the IBM of fi ce is located, had once risen by 500 yuan ($77) more per month.

Adjusting plans

“Beijing needs to finetune its urban planning,” said Mu Guangzong, a professor at the Institute of Population Research of Peking University. “Otherwise the city will go in the opposite direction of becoming a livable city.”

The sixth national population census of China showed the Chinese capital had 19.612 million permanent inhabitants on November 1, 2010, up 44.5 percent or 6.043 million people from 10 years ago.

According to the plan for Beijing’s municipal development between 2004 and 2020, which was approved by the State Council, the number of permanent residents in Beijing should have been capped below 18 million until the end of 2020.

BUSY HOLIDAY: The Temple of Heaven is packed with tourists during the Spring Festival in 2011

“People swarm to Beijing, Shanghai and other big cities because these cities are considered to have a more convenient life, brighter career opportunities and better public service facilities,” said Mu. “But this is just not true due to the heavy traffic and many other problems caused by overpopulation.”

Wang Jian, a water specialist with Green SOS, a Beijing-based environmental organization of university students, said the water availability in Beijing could only support at most 10 million people, or half of its current permanent residents.

Huang Yan, Director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning,said at a seminar on development problems in Beijing’s population and industries in late May more research on population-related issues would be carried out.

The development mode of Beijing should be improved, as the city’s population continued to grow and city life became less ef fi cient, she said.

“The current municipal development plan, which sets targets for Beijing’s economic and social development between 2004 and 2020, does not take into account the city’s rapid urbanization process. It focuses more on city expansion and economic growth, but fails to offer a coordinated strategy to balance environmental protection and development,” Huang said.

Zhang Zhixin, an associate professor at the Public Management Department of Capital University of Economics and Business, proposes to slice Beijing into several zones, each of which develops into big communities that have almost everything to satisfy people’s life and entertainment, including cinemas, gyms, shopping malls.

“The layout of Beijing is quite unbalanced,” said Zhang. “All the commercial areas are along the downtown Eastern Third Ring Road, while the south of Beijing is underdeveloped compared with the east. Now the problem is that everything is concentrated in the city center,especially central and local government of fi ces. If we can scatter the of fi ces around Beijing, life will be much easier.”

Plans in action

“The current municipal development plan,which sets targets for Beijing’s economic and social development between 2004 and 2020,does not take into account the city’s rapid urbanization process.”

—Huang Yan, Director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning

In January 2011, downtown Xicheng District announced to launch a large-scale population relocation program in 2013,which is expected to relieve the population pressure of the capital city’s heart and improve the living standards of residents.As the political and economic core area of Beijing, Xicheng is facing problems of high population density in cultural and historical heritage protection areas and a large number of shabby houses.

According to an official from the district’s Housing Construction Commission,the population relocation plan will involve six residential communities, where some of the residents have to move out to decrease the population density.

After the population relocation is completed, more public service facilities will be introduced to the district to further develop its cultural industry and to improve local residents’ living conditions.

In May 2011, the government of Tongzhou District, to the east of Beijing’s central business district, said the construction of a “Tongzhou New City” had been proposed, where international organizations and multinational companies may set up their headquarters.

“This hopefully can both boost the regional economy and ease environmental and resource pressure on the capital’s downtown area,” said Zhang Hua, deputy chief of Tongzhou District.

Prior to that, in April 2009, Beijing chose Daxing, a suburban district in the city’s south, as the location the No.2 Capital Airport to boost the economic development of south Beijing.

The construction of the airport is scheduled to be completed in 2015. “The new airport is designed to handle 40 million passengers annually,” said Beijing’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15). “By 2015, the capital’s total civil aviation capacity should reach 120 million passengers per year.”

It will take half an hour to reach the new airport from downtown by car.

Chen Jinxin, a professor on urban planning at Hebei University, said the new airport would also help the development of Tianjin, north China’s largest industrial city,and Hebei Province, the nearest province to Beijing.

Starting this year, Beijing and Hebei began working together on city planning programs.

“Beijing will have difficulties in solving its problems without cooperation from Tianjin and Hebei,” said Chen.

Urban planning experts suggest, in the trilateral cooperation, Beijing will be positioned as an international city, famous cultural city and habitable city, and will give priority to the development of tertiary industry; Tianjin will be cast as an international port city, economic center in north China and habitable city; and Hebei will focus on building raw material and heavy chemical bases, modern agriculture bases, resort bases and manufacturing bases.