ABSTRACT
New Areas are new urban districts that are given special economic and development support by central or regional government. In the space of a generation, its urbanisation rate has increased from less than 20 per cent to over 50 per cent, with more than 500 million people becoming city residents. The government’s policy is to spread its fast-growing urban population over a larger area by developing integrated clusters of cities rather than focusing infrastructure investment on large monocentric metropolises. China’s efforts to promote megaregions stem from widely shared concerns about the “endless cities” that can result from a lack of proactive planning. Models of urban development are then crucial to a range of economic, social, and environmental concerns. Like China’s growing cities more broadly, Xiongan represents an experiment in urbanisation on a scale never seen before and with massive consequences for millions of its citizens.
