- Predicament and Ways of Development for Chinese inland major Cities: Example of Chongqing    61 kb by    Zheng, Degao | degao71@hotmail.com    Short Outline Chongqing is presently facing several difficulties which urgently require resolution. The Government has proposed the construction of a one hour Metropolitan circular line to ease certain congestion difficulties and, at the same time, allow for a balanced development strategy between the city and its rural hinterland to take place. The overall impacts of internationalism and regionalism are also considered in this context. Abstract Chongqing, situated at upstream Yangtze River, is the only one municipality directly under the central government in Mid-West of China because of the Three Gorges Project. With the area of approximately 80,000 square kilometers, Chongqing has been one of world population most cities, approximately 31 million people in 2005, of which approximately 37% population living in central city approximately 5.56 million people, while the rural population occupies the other 73%. The development of dragging large area of rural countryside by a big city is the typical characteristic of Chongqing. As one of the inland cities in China, many difficulties must be faced by Chongqing, such as the employment and income level of immigrants from reservoir area. There are 300,000 immigrants need settled in Chongqing, occupied approximately 31% of total immigrants from reservoir area. Now the immigrants suffers an insufficient employment and a heavy-laden living, with the average employed population per household approximately 1.32 and the index of employed population burden 2.44. Moreover, the economic development of Chongqing excessive relies on the investment, most of which coming from central government while there are less folk capital and the foreign capital. We may conclude that, in a quite long period, the economy development of Chongqing will be mainly drawn by investments. The future development of Chongqing must answer the questions, how to enlarge the consumption market, how to increase exportation, and so on. In addition, the region of Three Gorges Project is responsible for the ecology repair and the environmental protection, in order to guarantee the safe of Three Gorges Dam. Resolving the conflict between development and protection, as well as increasing the immigrant's employment and farmers' income has become an urgent affair for Chongqing¡¯s government. Therefore, the government of Chongqing proposed a comprehensive strategy in early 2007, named One-hour Metropolitan Economy Circle Strategy. The strategy stresses decentralizing economic activities in the metropolitan economy circle, of which the central city is working as a core. So the request of economy developing and living could be met by the economic activity shift. The One-hour Metropolitan Economy Circle Strategy in Chongqing can be understood from three aspects, internationalization, regionalization and balanced development between city and countryside. Internationalization strategy of Chongqing's means attracting more foreign money not only for investment on heavy industries, such as automobile, the heavy duty machinery and so on, in which Chongqing has long history, but also for locally consumption because of the numerous population and strong expense ability followed. This pattern of development is not the same with that adopted by foreign enterprises in coastland of China, which is oriented by exportation processing industry. Moreover, freight transportation by Yangtze River harbor and airport are essential for future development of Chongqing. The Three Gorges Project, as well as Chongqing International Airport should be the motor for Chongqing¡¯s growth. Many international experiences indicated that the optimization of river harbor and airport and their peripheral areas is the important way for inland cities. The Chongqing regionalization strategy embodied through two spatial hierarchies. One focuses on the development of city cluster consisted by Chongqing and Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province, helping Chongqing, based on the realizing position and effect in the city cluster, to cooperatively develop in infrastructure, transportation and industries with Chengdu. The other emphasizes the development of small and medium towns within the one-hour metropolitan economy circle, which help to form a reasonably spatial structure for the metropolitan as well as the regional framework and platform with strong competitiveness. Chongqing's strategy of balanced development between city and countryside highlights small towns to improve their positions and effects in the region in order to acting as a spatial platform for balance. The small towns not only can develop the processing industry on primary products and increase farmers¡¯ income, but also can provide the infrastructure and the public facility service for the countryside. Generally speaking, based on the economic globalization, the development of major inland cities in China depends on not only the global market, but also the domestic market. Implement both the internationalization and regionalization strategies are very important. While the balanced strategy between city and countryside the development of countryside. (End) Keywords Chongqing One-hour Metropolitan Economy Circle Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2007: Urban Trialogues   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper