The dream of expansion in these metropolitan areas has been shattered

National Strategy

2024-04-08 11:41Posted in Macau, China

Text: Kaifeng

Metropolitan areas, not bigger is better.

The metropolitan area began to lose weight collectively.

Since last year, the newly approved national-level metropolitan areas have generally bid farewell to the "big city, big circle" model, and have suffered contraction without exception, even inter-provincial metropolitan areas.

A few days ago, the "Shaoxing Ronghang Development Plan" was released, disclosing the scope of the Hangzhou metropolitan area for the first time, including 11 districts and counties in Hangzhou and 4 districts and counties in Jiaxing, Huzhou and Shaoxing, with a total area of about 22,000 square kilometers.

The dream of expansion in these metropolitan areas has been shattered

In September last year, Hangzhou's official report revealed that the Hangzhou metropolitan area plan had been approved by the state, and at that time public opinion generally believed that Hangzhou would become the third inter-provincial metropolitan area to be approved after Nanjing and Chongqing.

However, the dream of inter-provincial expansion of the Hangzhou metropolitan area does not seem to have come true.

According to the latest plan, the Hangzhou metropolitan area, as a national metropolitan area, will eventually be limited to the province, covering only four places: Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Huzhou and Shaoxing, and not all counties are among them.

As early as 2020, Hangzhou introduced a metropolitan area plan, which at that time was known as "Hanghu Jiashao Quhuang", covering six cities including Hangzhou, Huzhou, Jiaxing, Shaoxing, Quzhou and Huangshan in Anhui, with a total area of 50,000 square kilometers.

Nowadays, not only Huangshan in Anhui Province is not among them, but even Quzhou City in the province is excluded from the "circle", and Hangzhou has also retreated from a veritable inter-provincial metropolitan area to a provincial metropolitan area.

And that's not all there is to the "slimming" of the metropolitan area.

Earlier, Hangzhou officials bluntly stated in relevant reports that Xuancheng City, Shangrao City, and Jingdezhen City are the "westward" areas of the new round of planning, officially expanding regional influence from within the province to outside the province.

As early as 2020, Anhui Xuancheng was listed as an "observer" city in the Hangzhou metropolitan area, and it was considered to be only one step away from entering the circle.

Xuancheng itself is already a member of the Nanjing metropolitan area, and if it can finally join the Hangzhou metropolitan area, backed by the two central cities, it can be said that it will be advantageous to be left and right.

In fact, Anhui does not mind the cross-provincial development of cities in the province.

Local planning, and even a clear statement to promote the integration of Huangshan, Xuancheng and Chizhou into the Hangzhou metropolitan area to leverage development, this move is regarded as a symbol of the formation of "bulk Anhui".

If all these ideas come true, the Hangzhou metropolitan area is expected to eventually span more than 10 cities in three provinces, becoming one of the largest inter-provincial metropolitan areas in the country.

Unfortunately, the Hangzhou metropolitan area failed to continue to expand in the end, and the slimming of the metropolitan area became a common constraint.

Inter-provincial expansion has always been a sign of a city's influence.

In the mainland, the influence of administrative divisions on the allocation of resources is far-reaching, and the difficulty of cross-city and cross-provincial integration is far from the coordination within the region and province.

However, with the gradual establishment of a unified market, cross-administrative economic integration has been put on the agenda, and "exploring the reform of appropriate separation of economic zones and administrative regions" has been written into the official plan, and metropolitan areas and urban agglomerations are the embodiment of this idea.

There are more than 30 metropolitan areas in the country, and their influence is not limited to one city and one place, but only a few megacities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Chongqing have the potential to expand the circle across provinces.

Although there are many metropolitan areas, only 14 national-level metropolitan areas have been approved, and Beijing and Shanghai are not among them for the time being, and Nanjing and Chongqing are the only two inter-provincial metropolitan areas.

As the first inter-provincial metropolitan area in China, the Nanjing metropolitan area spans Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, not only including 4 cities and 2 districts in Jiangsu Province, but also 4 cities in Anhui Province, including Ma'anshan, Chuzhou, Wuhu and Xuancheng in Anhui Province.

The Nanjing metropolitan area covers an area of 66,000 square kilometers, and the core area is also 27,000 square kilometers, far exceeding the metropolitan area that was later approved.

If we look at the whole area, the total economic volume of the Nanjing metropolitan area exceeds 5 trillion yuan, surpassing Guangzhou and approaching the Shenzhen metropolitan area, and if we look at the core area, the total economic volume of the Nanjing metropolitan area is about 3 trillion yuan, which is at the same level as Wuhan and Chengdu.

Why does the Nanjing metropolitan area cover such a wide area and have such a large geographical area?

The reason for this is that before the approval, Nanjing's identity as "Huijing" was recognized, and its influence itself had spanned the two provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui.

More importantly, Nanjing was the first national-level metropolitan area approved in the country, and at that time, the expansion of the metropolitan area was still the main theme, and almost all cities were desperately expanding their "sphere of influence", and they were the first to be approved and the first to benefit from it.

This also shows that any favorable policy has a time cycle, and once it is missed, it will no longer be there, such as the planning of metropolitan areas, the merger of provincial capitals with surrounding cities, and the withdrawal of counties and districts.

In fact, as the second approved inter-provincial metropolitan area, the Chongqing metropolitan area has significantly shrunk its final scope, although its influence has reached Sichuan.

According to the plan, the Chongqing metropolitan area covers 21 districts of Chongqing and Guang'an City, Sichuan, although 1 city in Sichuan is shortlisted, not all districts and counties in Chongqing are included.

According to the latest administrative division, Chongqing has 38 districts and counties, including 26 districts, 8 counties and 4 autonomous counties. The Chongqing metropolitan area only includes the main urban area, and the vast Three Gorges Reservoir area in northeast Chongqing and the Wuling mountain area in southeast Chongqing are not among them.

However, a few days ago, the main metropolitan area of Chongqing ushered in the first expansion, and Dianjiang County, which originally belonged to the northeast of Chongqing, was included in it, expanding from 21 districts to 22 districts and counties.

At that time, the Chongqing metropolitan area may usher in a "contrarian" expansion, but it is still the configuration of the main metropolitan area + Guang'an City, Sichuan, and it has also failed to overexpand.

Therefore, this time the Hangzhou metropolitan area is no longer inter-provincial, and the future planning of the Shanghai and Beijing metropolitan areas and the rumored super circle model, I am afraid there will be a certain distance.

Not just inter-provincial metropolitan areas, almost all new metropolitan area plans have shrunk.

Since last year, a new batch of national-level metropolitan areas have been born, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Jinan, Qingdao and other super megacities.

Among them, the Wuhan metropolitan area has been reduced from the original "1+8" to the four cities of Wuhan, Hubei and Huanghuang, and the Zhengzhou metropolitan area no longer includes Luoyang.

Even the two most mature mega-metropolitan areas, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, are basically confined to the Pearl River Delta and no longer cover the vast east, west and north of Guangdong.

All this comes from the turn of policy, and the infinite expansion model of the metropolitan area came to an abrupt end.

In September 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) stated:

The development of the mainland metropolitan area is still in the initial stage, and all localities should respect the objective law, not cross the stage of development, and promote the construction of the metropolitan area without conditions...... It is necessary to scientifically and rationally determine the spatial scope of the metropolitan area on the basis of population and economic relations, and prevent blind expansion.

The so-called metropolitan area generally refers to the spatial form of urbanization within the urban agglomeration, centered on super megacities or large cities with strong radiation-driven functions, and with a one-hour commuting circle as the basic scope.

These tones have basically determined the threshold of the metropolitan area.

First of all, not all cities have the possibility of creating metropolitan areas.

The central city is the most basic premise, if a place can't even take care of its own development, let alone drive the development of the surrounding areas?

In this regard, the economically underdeveloped provincial capitals in the central and western regions do not seem to have the need to build metropolitan areas.

Secondly, the one-hour commuting circle basically delineates the reasonable range of the metropolitan area.

The 1-hour commuting circle covers a radius of 50-100 kilometers, and the geographical area is generally about 20,000 square kilometers.

As a matter of fact, the division of counties and cities hundreds of kilometers away into a metropolitan area with a strong center has only formal significance, and the division of the entire province into a metropolitan area is at most a conceptual carnival and has little practical significance.

Third, the metropolitan area cannot be blindly expanded, let alone blooming everywhere.

According to research, there are currently more than 30 large metropolitan areas in the country, and most of these urban agglomerations are still in the cultivation stage.

According to a report released by the Institute of Urbanization of Tsinghua University, only six metropolitan areas, including Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Beijing and Ningbo, are classified as mature, 17 are developmental, and 11 are cultivated.

In fact, no matter how the metropolitan area is planned, it will not be able to escape the reshuffle of market logic in the end. If the development of co-urbanization and integration is not as expected, no matter how big the circle is, it will not make much sense.

Conversely, as long as the industrial and population spillovers are extremely strong, even if there are planning restrictions, the actual "sphere of influence" is enough to cross cities and provinces.

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