Chinese cities - my thoughts...

After being in several Chinese cities I have been very impressed by their functional and rapid development with an eye to sustainable futures. Comparing them to the cities of the UK I can see that they are growing far more rapidly with a drastic increase in the urban population - the only way to provide housing to this growth in the space available is to build up, and this they have done, the tower blocks of old rose just 7-8 stories high and look dated surrounding the inner city areas but the modern flats are 20-30 stories high and modern in design and features. The housing marches out from the centre with re-development (gentrification of older districts) and expansion onto farmland. I witnessed massive developments comparable in size to whole cities with 50+ tower blocks under development in single plots - amazing. All of this development is supported through excellent urban planning with importance placed on keeping the urbanised population mobile, achieved through public transport schemes including cheap buses (2y per ride), cheap metro lines (2-5y/20-50p per single journey) and the growth of multi lane expressways with dedicated bus lanes. All in all the Chinese urbanisation can in many ways be seen as a great success in urban planning in that it is successfully meeting the needs of the fastest rate of urbanisation ever witnessed.