Chapters authored
The Rise and Decline of Car Use in Beijing and Shanghai
Chinese cities have primarily evolved around walking, bicycling and public transport with their dense, linear form and mixed land use. The recent urban growth spurt has involved private motorisation, but because of land constraints and not fearing urban density, as in Anglo-Saxon cities, the same dense urbanism has been maintained. This means that automobiles do not easily fit into this traditional fabric and especially the historic walking fabric. Issues like congestion and air quality have become major constraints to further growth. Using Beijing and Shanghai as case studies, the next phase of urban and transport development now appears to be to reduce car use with the dramatic growth in urban rail as in most developed cities in the twenty-first century. This decoupling of car use from economic growth is consistent with other developed cities but is a first for emerging cities, hence the paper aims to explain this pattern from the cultural, political and especially urban fabric perspectives. The application to other Chinese cities and emerging cities is now possible following Beijing and Shanghai’s lead.
Part of the book: Sustainability in Urban Planning and Design