2016 3rd International Conference on Social Science (ICSS 2016) ISBN: 978-1-60595-410-3
Urbanization Process of US and Its Enlightenments for China Zhao WANG, Shu LIU Big Data Research Center, Jianghan University, Wuhan, Hubei province, new technology development zone, China
Keywords: Urbanization, Suburbanization, Intensive Development.
Abstract. In recent years, the essence of urbanization in US is the suburbanization, which produces enormous exploitation and occupation of land resources, and induces destruction of the original ecologic, that is not a sustainable development model. The practical production proves large city is the real way for the sustainable development of the society. As a developing country, China should borrow successful experience from the metropolis development of US. At the same time, we should take fully aware of Chinese own situations, draw lessons from the metropolis development of US. Intensive development maybe a kind feasible manner for Chinese metropolis.
Guidelines Northam find the curve of urbanization process is similar to the extended sigmoid curve in 45 degree, when he studies the proportion of population over the world cities. The curve of urbanization process of US is also a sigmoid curve, which is completely consistent with Northam’s study. The urbanization process of US experienced the initial stage, the accelerated stage, and now has entered the mature stage.
The Essence of Urbanization in US is the Suburbanization Now After 1960, the population of US cities grows slowly, the urbanization has entered the mature development stage. The most notable characteristic is suburbanization. During this period, the rural people are not trend to cities, and the city population start to slow down. On the contrary, the city population is gradually moving away from the city center, tending to the suburbs. Therefore, since then the essence of urbanization in US is suburbanization. In other words, it is counter-urbanization. Tracking the suburbanization process of US, the manufacturing industry realized suburbanization in early 1920s. A combination of factors leads to many industries began to move away from the centre of cities, the apparent advantages appear in suburban. With industries moving to suburban, people start to live in suburb which is far from urban areas. However the trending is not obvious. After the Second World War, cities expand fast, suburbs develop rapidly. Suburbs perform more perfect in several aspects. It is more convenient for live, cause the transportation, communications, infrastructure and other aspects for live has been improved much. From 1950 to 1960, the decade of US, suburban population increase 17 million people, 70% of the them are from the center of the city, the rural population accounts for 33% of the total population proportion, almost catch up to the urban population. In 1970, suburban population account for 37% of the total population, which has exceeded the proportion of urban
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population ratio. In 1980, American suburban population has exceeded 100 million, which accounted for more than half of the population. In other words, the majority of the population which ever lived in downtown has moved to the suburbs, and population in downtown has decreased significantly, suburbs become public life center, the United States has become a typical suburban nation. It can be said suburbanization caters to the majority of Americans, people could enjoy spacious private space and the nature world. However, it is hard to say suburbanization, which is the spread of land using, is the scientific way for develop. From the perspective of sustainable development, suburbanization is not a good way of development: it is the great consumption of resources, and ecological destruction. "Cities in American History" had commented that suburbs are the most representative to contemporary American material and cultural achievements. However, the extensive development of suburbs is the main reason for the unique customs in US: great reliance on car, a waste of natural resource, the separation of living and working, different ethnic groups of the estranged and so on.
The Harm of the Expansion of Development During decades of the suburban development in United States, the huge scale of cities is built, and the development of different areas is approached. People would like to move from center of cities to the surroundings. The improvement of suburbs relieves central cities' living and employment pressure and the limitation of central cities' environmental carrying capacity, and also the traffic jam and environment pollution has gotten better. Nevertheless, increasing the range of suburbanization cannot treat the "sickness" of cities fundamentally, it is only a simple and direct solution. Seemingly, it can ease the traffic pressure and environment pollution, but actually it is the greater destruction. Suburbanization is an unsustainable development modal which is expensing land resources to grow. Because the land per capita consumption in United State is higher than other countries. During the suburbanization of cities in United State, many buildings and infrastructures despoiled lots of land resources and expand horizontally. On the other hand, the development of suburbanization can cause further damage to the ecology environment, and other countries are not able to copy that. The suburbanization generates a large area of air pollution, because the government encourages people to travel by their private cars. It can improve the development of the automobile industry and obviously makes the air pollution at the same time. There are numbers of ecological damages to be shown: farmland and natural ecology are occupied; the air and water resources are polluted; natural landscapes are ruined, and resulting in wildlife decline or extinction .etc.
Intensive Development of Big Cities is the Development Experience of Urbanization in the United States The urbanization of the United States in recent decades is indeed suburbanization, which is a great development and occupation of land resources and the biggest expense for the original, this is not a sustainable development model. Tested that big city is the real way out of social sustainable development. Big cities always give a person with a big gap between the rich and poor, traffic congestion, high crime rates, environmental degradation and so on, let people think the city is "ill", people
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then flee out. However, the development of the city did not cause the "sick" culprit, urban economic development, paying attention to efficiency will increase the gap between the rich and the poor. When pay attention to fairness, the government could lead to the reasonable secondary allocation of the wealth ,then raise the public welfare of low-income people. Traffic congestion, environmental pollution can be eased through reasonable layout and centralized regulation. By increasing the city economic development profit and improving fiscal and tax wealth, urban crime can be suppressed. Not only that, the benefits of scale effects bringing to the production and living in big cities are obvious to all. GDP contribution can be found from the city, the city has produced the vast majority of economic benefit in the limited land area within the production is efficient. Intensive cities, let people can share the city resources, use highly effective public transport, thus enhance the communication between people and increase the speed of the spread of knowledge exchange. those advantages of the city would be found by people gradually. If people work together to build a total of their homes, pathological cities can be adjusted by the immune system of itself. Therefore, focusing on big cities is the best recipe to the construction of resource intensive and environmentally friendly society.
Our Country Present Stage Urban Sprawl Since the reform and opening, the development of the city in our country leaps and bounds, urbanization develops rapidly. According to China statistical yearbook, China's urbanization rate is 36.22% in 2000, and at the end of 2012 the urbanization rate had reached 52.57%, the urbanization rate between twelve years rose 16.35%, the average urbanization rate is as high as 1.36%. As to the previous study of American urbanization speed, nearing the end of American urbanization speed is only 0.55%. The rapid development achievements of China in urbanization attracted worldwide attention. Rapid urbanization in our country, at the same time, also appeared some problems. China's new-type city emerges endlessly, urban area is continuously expanding outward, which causes our country land urbanization far above the urbanization of the population. According to statistics, from 2001 to 2008, the land urbanization growth speed is one times the growth rate of population urbanization. The local government, in order to improve the land fiscal revenue, expanding urban land area, building, thus to improving the urban land value. Many cities said the expansion is to develop. Extreme pursuit of construction speed and ignore the growth of urban population, supply, easy to cause supply bigger than demand and dislocation resources configuration, at last form a waste. The emergence of the "ghost town" is a typical example of China's urbanization development course; "ghost town" appeared in our field of vision, which has become a unique phenomenon in China. "Ghost towns", as the name suggests, is the city of ghosts, also empty. Sounds frightening, but a city without people is indeed a failed product, also the bubble of the exhibits. Kangbashi new city located in China's southwest ordos is one of the most typical "ghost towns" exhibits, people who work here during the day, while night people don't want to live in Kang city, because it’s quiet at night to be utter silence. This is the result of excessive pursuit of development speed, Kang city built in the desert in just five years, but the quality did not keep up with the urbanization, housing development supporting facilities were not perfect, lead to lack of appealing of the population here, the market demand did not formed. Rely too much on real estate, without considering the quality of urbanization construction. A complete set of schools, hospitals and public facilities of life is not complete,
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the city can't attract popularity due to low urbanization quality, naturally present ghostly silence in city.
Our Country Does not Have the Suburbanization Development Condition as America. After 1960 in The United States, the urban population growth is slow, urbanization has entered a mature development period, the most outstanding feature of urbanization is suburbanization. Later in 1960, the United States began to slow down the growth of urban population, the trend of the rural population into the city is no longer clear. At the same time, as the gap between rich and poor in the center of city, traffic congestion, high crime rates, environmental degradation and so on question followed, lower quality of urbanization, population towards downtown and gradually settled in the suburbs. Therefore, after 1960 in the United States urbanization was suburbanization, or counter urbanization. Scattered way of living made a lot of Americans live a pastoral life in the mountain, our country, however, does not have the conditions of the development of suburbanization significantly. Firstly, the Chinese people are more, but land is less, land per capital is less than a quarter of the United States, far less arable land per capital. America has less people, but land resource is abundant, when on suburban development, low-density-spread type construction, while land use efficiency is reduced, increased damage to the environment, but there are still a hosting space. But our country is a big country of the population, the available land resource is limited, the open development will be more use of cultivated land resources and improve the environmental damage. Secondly, because of the resource distribution in our country, most areas lack of city development elements, unfavorable to build development. As one of the most important water resources of urban development, data shows according to our country's 657 cities, there are 420 cities lack of water resources, of which 110 cities are on acute shortage of water, the development of these areas does not have expansion conditions. Like other deserts, gobi, typhoon, earthquake zone, building construction can increase later maintenance costs of the cities. Finally, the America's suburbanization has its own weaknesses, the development of suburbanization itself can do damage to ecological environment. For example, the original occupy of farmland and natural ecology, pollution of air and water, the destruction of the natural landscape, lead to the decline or extinction of wild plants and animals, and so on. Therefore, our country does not have the conditions of the development of suburbanization, nor advocate the development of the suburban expansion mode. On the way to the development of urbanization in our country, it must be rooted in the basis of the current situation of environment and resources in China, and take sustainable development road. China's large population density, land area per capita is insufficient, in addition, the shortage of water resources, suitable for development of urban land. We should protect our precious land resources, improve the efficiency of land use, reduce land extravagance and waste, avoid causing large-scale ecological damage. It is necessary for us to take a different development path from the urbanization of America, seeking intensive and efficient urbanization development pattern, using resources intensively, focusing on big cities.
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China Should Draw Experiences and Lessons from America, and Develop Big Cities Intensively. China should see the development of the large cities in America, the successful experience of megalopolis, avoid a similar fate, first expansion and then intensive, and develop on their booth pie type first, after the big end, tuck resources. Condition of fully understanding its own development in our country, draw experiences and lessons from American city development, and intensive development of big cities. This is not only the ecological protection and urban scale effect is also good for the country's economic and social development. First of all, the modern cities through the establishment of a higher standard of environmental protection, through comprehensive treatment, can achieve good environmental supervision and control effect, it is the deep planning and protection of China's overall environment. Second, the scale of the economic growth in big cities is obvious to all. “Do big cities: the theory of ecological civilization construction of the first strategy” wrote, 2% of the world's surface has created more than 80% of the global GDP, in which big city and megalopolis occupy a great share. Such as China's top ten city of ten million people, have contributed 23.62% of national GDP, big cities provisioned pull function on the national economy. Finally, pooling resources can let people enjoy the high quality of urbanization, more people can share the education resource fully, perfect medical environment, good job market, and so on. In the process of intensive development of big cities, our country also met all sorts of barriers. Such as the household registration system was enacted to restrict the flow of population, to avoid collision and produce irreconcilable contradiction of urban and rural differences. And hard to avoid this problem will only make the gap between urban and rural areas become bigger, until the emergence of temporary residence permits, the flow of population to become loose. Today, however, the city is still not completely opening the migration restrictions, especially the very large population of the city has most strict restrictions, the urban population scale through strict control. This aspect, which limits the development of city space, inhibit the scale of the city, also limits the rural population, on the other hand, the right quality of urbanization, the rural population health, education, employment environment are worrying. There should have a plan to perfect the urban construction in our country and eliminate various barriers of urbanization development, giving full play to the advantages of intensive development continuously.
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