CCEA, Liangjiang: growth pole and city logistic
CCEA: Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Area
By designing Liangjiang New Area in north Chongqing as the 3rd National Economic Development Area after Shanghai Pudong (1995) and Tianjin Binhai (2005), Beijing hopes this 1,200 square meters area would function as the growth pole for not only CCEA, but also the whole southwestern region including Yuanna, Guizhou, etc.
In order to compound the functioning growth pole, state council pubished CCEA Regional Planning (NDRC, May 2011), which explicites comprehensive regional-level transportation, land use, and industrial planning. The CCEA has incorported "main fuctional area" (State Council, 2010) philosophy in its land use and has designed key industries clusters for each urbanization agglomeration, which functions together will largely restrict the potential hazards growth pole might bring along, like the inefficient competitition between cities and abuse of land resources.
For the recent two decades, investment has been Chongqing's main GDP sources (note 1), and with the newly desgined Liangjiang New Area, this situation is not likely to change in the coming 5-10 years. On the consumer side, Chongqing has been notorious for its being bipoled, corrupted officials and mafias on one side and impoverished street Bangbang (banboo stick) men on the other side.
In the coming future, Chongqing will still be a human resource, agriculture products outputing region, but it is determined to move up the labor ladder by embracing more high-end manufacturing industries like IT, equipment, and chemical, as well as service industril, like IT service, financial, tourist and exhibition industries.
Massive industrialization and urbanization implicate massive circulation of goods and people flows. The first genre of Chongqing's output, industrial products (be it trains carriages, engines, computers, etc) is largely locally producted but is to be distributed to national and international market. Even the other two genres of Chongqing's economic productions, agri-production and experience industries (be it exhibition, tourism, flight transfer, etc) also faces national and international market. It is clear that a sound transportation network infrastructure(hardware) and efficient city logistic solution (software) will be the key element to support Chongqing's development.
City logistic solution (software) might be CCEA's weak point, especially Chongqing, where the geography is more complex and urbanization more aggressive. To develop an efficient city logistic solution, a holistic and organic approach must be adopted, like designing compact urban layout, prioritising public transportation, etc, however it hasn't been addressed yet in Chongqing official documents. Considering the famous new slogan "Liangjiang Speed", Chongqing might well be to late to act in delivering a sustainable city logistic solution, when main urban infrastructures are already laid down.
notes;
1, Since 1990, Chongqing has been helped by massive central-government support under the flag of "great western development". In the past decade, 80% of the municipality's growth has come from investment (half financed by state-owned banks and the government), and the municipal leaders aims to halve investment's contribution to growth and triple that of consumption and exports. As a result, over the last decade, the area has embraced rapid economic growth with annual real GDP per capita growth of 15.98% between 1997 and 2006, accompanied by a rapid urbanization with the urban rate increasing from 35.6% in 2000 to 48.3% in 2007.
