The US is 81% urbanized.
And here's a comparative chart of PPP per capita vs urbanization: https://theaspiringeconomist.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/urbani...
China's per-capita PPP is about 12-13k, so doing the obvious extrapolation gets you a 65-70% urbanization rate (as opposed to the article's claim that a 60% target is 'too high').
http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20130330.php#.V47PTc...
Between the huge streets and the crazy drivers, I really don't enjoy walking around. Typical American cities are much better in that respect, although many fewer Americans take advantage.
The reason is crowds: try walking through Sheung Wan, or Singapore's preserved shophouse streets in Chinatown, on a Sunday afternoon and see what average speed you achieve... And you can also spot crazy drivers better in a large, wide-roaded grid than round the corner of a hutong where you have to spot the direction of the rapidly approaching noise so you know which side to jump. Not to mention: the sun can actually shine if the roads are wide, in tight streets you are in the dark even at lunchtime.
Smog is a problem which can be solved, as much of Europe and the US have demonstrated. China will eventually move industry out of the cities and drive with catalytic converters.
Where tight streets might win is when they are coupled with a pedestrian area. "No cars" is still the most pleasant walking experience.
The overpasses at lujiazui are very popular with tourists who want to pose in front of the pearl tower for a photo. Try that in the middle of a street.
This is a very odd objection. Those streets are generally physically impassable for pedestrians, traffic or no.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/world/1773063-top-10-densest-...
http://www.yi-may.com/THE-GREAT-MIGRATION
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?p=56594707&postco...
http://www.mascontext.com/issues/19-trace-fall-13/the-chengz...
http://popupcity.net/villages-in-the-city-a-guide-to-south-c...
Here's a photo outside of my hotel during my stay in Shanghai: http://imgur.com/xW9SoZP.jpg
Surely, people don't want to migrate to urban areas in part because of the smog.
Funnily enough, that neighborhood has been turned into an upscale shopping and entertainment district, and many of the new shops are built in a shikumen style.
... and the cavalier attitude of those buying China's exports.
"A significant portion of Chinese emissions of air pollutants in recent years has resulted from the manufacture of goods intended for export, new research by a team of Chinese and international scholars found, reflecting the increasingly global nature of China’s environmental crisis."
"The U.S., as a major buyer of Chinese-made goods, has a stake in China curbing its emissions. For each of the pollutants examined—including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and black carbon—about 21% of export-related emissions in the year 2006 were tied to Chinese exports to the U.S, the researchers found."
“If all the emissions were reallocated according to where goods are consumed…emissions of many of China’s trade partners would be much higher,” they wrote. In the case of the U.S., for example, emissions of the four pollutants analyzed would have been 6-19% higher in 2006 “if the emissions embodied in its trade with China were included.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/01/21/u-s-exports-it...
For an individual importing from China, it is rare to impossible to get accurate figures on the environmental impact of what you're importing.
Lax environmental oversight is the CCP's choice and the CCP's choice alone.
Taxing or prohibiting pollution is a much more direct way to influence the situation, and that's up to China.
I don't know how many people care, though. I don't think there's great awareness of the health consequences of pollution, and I got some puzzlement when talking about the negative consequences. I feel like it's seen as more of an aesthetic problem.
I don't think it's scaring many people away from the cities. Economic opportunity is far more important for most people than far-future diseases. Beijing has a huge problem with illegal immigration from rural areas, with millions of people living there without residency permits.
The entire planet? That seems a bit much.
I suspect every industrializing country goes through a heavy pollution stage.
"By the 1940’s, Pittsburgh was dark at all hours of the day.":
http://popularpittsburgh.com/darkhistory/
The Lake Erie area was so polluted by the 1960s the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire. The lake itself was pretty much devoid of life near land:
http://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/58
Plus the killer fogs in London. And don't forget Lake Karachay, which the Russians used as a nuclear wasted dump.
"Starting in the 1960s, the lake began to dry out; its area dropped from 0.5 km2 in 1951[1] to 0.15 km2 by the end of 1993.[6] In 1968, following a drought in the region, the wind carried 185 PBq (5 MCi) of radioactive dust away from the dried area of the lake, irradiating half a million people.[3]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay
Hungry people can't afford to worry too much about pollution, and even after the political will exists to clean up the air and water it still takes time to actually do it.
Seems like a good time to bring up http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016... (Quoted below nearly in full)
> As journalists descend on Cleveland to cover the Republican convention, it is inevitable that news stories mention the infamous 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River. The story of this fire is largely a fable, however, as I have documented at length. Much of what people write and read about the fire, and its historical context, just is not so.
> The June 22, 1969, fire was not much of a fire at all. More importantly, it was not the first river fire, on the Cuyahoga or elsewhere. River fires were quite common in the late 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. There were several fires on the Cuyahoga over this period, as there were fires in Columbus, Detroit, Philadelphia and lots of other places. Yet prior to the 1960s, and the awakening of the modern environmental movement, river fires did not attract much attention outside of local communities. Fortunately, local communities saw river fires as a problem, and took action.
> What was different about 1969 was not that a river had gotten so dirty that it caught fire but that industrial rivers had been cleaned sufficiently that river fires were no longer common.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro#/media/File%3...
Since Shanghai has somewhere around 24 million people [1] and is ranked 10th in population density [2] in the world, I would expect it to have a "better" system regardless of who you compare it with. By contrast, the first US city in the top 125 cities is San Francisco at 104th, and a population density 5 times smaller than Shanghai.
However, "better" is more than just how big the system is. Beijing has a huge subway system, but using it to go across the city takes an hour (e.g. from Sihui to Zhongguancun). In fact, it seems like every mode of transport in Beijing travels at the speed of a bike. A cab gets stuck on the ring roads; the bus requires waiting and has lots of stops plus traffic lights; the subway requires a walk to/from the station, plus waiting, plus a likely 5 min transfer walk, plus waiting, not to mention that you'll be standing up that whole time, and squished if during rush hour. (On the plus side, when I was there it was practically free at 33 cents a ride.) Unfortunately, biking in Beijing is like swimming with sharks (cars) in muddy waters (air). So... Beijing has a huge system, but is it "better"? Well, yes and no...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai
[2] http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-...
In my country there is calculation that some 80% of all wealth is bound to infrastructure. So leaving behind one infra and building another would be the most expensive thing a family could ever do. Middle class of poor country would stay in inherited house.