Group urban

Group Urban , or clustered city, is a concept raised in 2003 city blue paper "City Development Report of China (2002-2003)" pressed by The Commercial Press.^[1] It is a concept to describe the macro development object. It is not a widely used concept in the academics.^[2]

The term is now widely used in discussion regarding to development of Chinese cities. The term describes multi-centered cities consisting of different groups, with one or multiple central group(s). Different groups are connected with freeways and/or subways. The groups are usually divided by rivers and hills, but later merged into a single city.

Some typical group urban cities are listed below^[3]

1. Chongqing: northern bank (Jiangbei), southern bank (Jiangnan), and Yuzhong, divided by Yangtze River and Jialing River, are the central groups, and Wanzhou, Fuling are satellite groups.^[4]
2. Guangzhou: Guangzhou and Panyu consist the central group, and Huadu, Conghua, Zengcheng are satellite groups.
3. Wuhan: the cities was merged from three towns Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang, divided by Yangtze River and Han River, and each town is a single but equivalent group.
4. Budapest: the cities was merged from Buda and Pest, along the two sides of Donau River.
5. Shanghai: the newly developed Pudong, acting as the second group, transformed Shanghai into a group urban
6. Tianjin: the newly developed Binhai New District, acting as the second group, transformed Tianjin into a group urban
7. Taizhou, Zhejiang: the city was merged from Huangyan, Jiaojiang and Luqiao as three groups.
8. Zibo: the city consists of five groups: Zhangdian, Zichuan, Boshan, Zhoucun, Linzi^[5]
9. Shenzhen: the city was born into three groups: Shekou-Nantou, Luohu, Shatoujiao; then developed into two central groups (Futian-Luohu & Qianhai) and five satellite groups (Longgang, Longhua, Guangming, Pingshan, and Yantian)^[6]

References