By Wang Hui, "China's Urbanization Development Strategy and Policy Research" group, Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC)

Research Report No 93, 2014 (Total 4592)

Abstract:

By comparing four patterns of urbanization, it is seen that the synchronous improvement of urbanization level and quality is important for the healthy development of urbanization.

Many developed countries like Britain and the United States have realized high quality urbanization over a long period of exploration. Other economies like Japan and Korea saw urbanization develop rapidly and maintain high quality at the same time. The Latin American  countries,caught in the middle-income trap, however, have a high level of urbanization but suffer from low quality because of defects in their strategies and systems, which results in development difficulties. Resource-driven countries like Saudi Arabia should also improve their urbanization quality even though they have a high level of urbanization.

Drawing lessons from many other countries in the world, China needs to deal with issues such as land reform, environment governance, income distribution, industrial upgrade and city governance in carrying out the process of urbanization. It should give emphasis to the quality of urbanization and try hard to improve urbanization quality and level simultaneously.