Pearl River Mega Urban Corridor

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Europe's transition to modernity involved one of the great demographic transformations in history, with 200 million people moving from rural to urban between the late 1400s and 1800s.  Arguably, that demographic shift was the driving force to the deep structural transformations in society, politics, economics, and culture that we capture with the term "modernity."  Fast forward to China's Pearl River delta complex, one of humanity's core foundations of civilization, where another great transformation took place with China's "opening" in 1978.  As the first special economic zone, the Pearl River became ground zero for the country's "great leap forward."  While it took Europe several hundred years for its demographic shift to happen, China accomplished a 300 million people rural to urban transition in the space of 30 years.  In the process, existing cities like Guangzhou, Macau, and Hong Kong became mega cities, while small, rural towns became major cities, such as Shenzhen boomed from tens of thousands to tens of millions within a few short years.  Understanding the broader implications of this great transformation is key for understanding 21st century urbanism.  Among the big questions City Lab is interested in knowing:  What is the global impact of this mega urban corridor?  How does studying the Pearl River complex help us to understand the mega urban corridor phenomena as a driving force in the 21st century?  How do we compare the Pearl River complex to other corridors, such as Boston to DC or Vancouver to Tijuana?  To what extent is the Pear River complex sustainable?  To what extent should we see it as an example of human resilience?  To what extent are the cities within the complex one urban formation, and to what extent are they uniquely individual urban formations whose importance might be lost due when we view them from the mega urban corridor perspective?

 

A starting point for analysis of the Pear River corridor is OMA and Harvard Graduate School of Design's seminar project, The Great Leap Forward.  The project traces the urban transformation from an interdisciplinary perspective by examining Chinese urbanism during the Maoist period and how the 1978 opening repositioned the urban form within China's development model. This book was one of the original inspirations for City Lab's formation at DePauw University.

 

A good, concise overview of China's urban transformation is provided in John Friedmann's China’s Urban Transition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).  Click here for the Google Book.    

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Photo essay from The Guardian provides amazing perspective of the Pear River's great urban transformation.  https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/10/china-pearl-river-delta-then-and-now-photographs