The Theory Of Compact City And Research On Urban Sprawl In Beijing

Since 1990,compact city(smart growth)has been regarded as a prime tool to counter urban sprawl.Featuring high density,mixed use,public transportation,compact city aims to achieve sustainability goals: to save land and energy consumption,to promote social equity and to revive urban vitality.Since 1990,Beijing’s Urban sprawl,known as “pie shaped spreading”,has caused severe problems such as traffic congestion,physical deterioration,erosion of green belts.However,urban sprawl is nonetheless a negative word.It has proven to be contributory to urban economy and gross social welfare in western countries.Urban sprawl is not to be confused with urban space expansion;rather,it refers to irregular,unplanned,low density development at city fringe.In order to understand the differences of sprawl mechanism and suggest proper solutions to curb urban sprawl in Beijing,the metropolitan areas in the USA,UK and Taiwan were chosen for comparative analysis,in terms of sprawl mechanism and anti-sprawl planning policies.Findings: 1 Compact City:Compact City is mostly effective in saving land,energy consumption,partly effective in promoting social equity and renewal inner city economy,ineffective in reducing vehicular miles travelled and energy consumption.Urban sprawl in the US and UK are mostly market driven(price,supply and demand,competition),while sprawl in China are mostly driven by government(public housing,transportation and environment)and regulations(land,tax,government and city planning.Through comparative analysis,it is found that UK and Taiwan has less sprawl than the US and China.Reasons:Smaller farm areas/ stronger monitoring/ higher costs for land use change motivate better senses for farm land protection,unified urban-rural planning control/city planning and tax policies combining restrictive and directive tools lead to compact urban developments.2 Beijing’s Sprawl: Beijing’s sprawl is a combination of over crowdedness in the inner city and dispersed sprawl in the fringe areas.The evidences of sprawl has been identifies on four indicators(urban-rural migrant,developed land/population,transportation cost,farm land loss,as well as the shocking amount of non-conforming land use.Beijing’s sprawl is driven by regulatory and institutional factors.Policies such as Reallocation of Government Factories、Housing Reform and New Town Projects,as well as the Urban-rural Land Management Law,the Tax law of 1993、the Administrative Law of City Government、the Urban-rural Planning Law have both contributed to the urban sprawl of Beijing.Tong Zhou New Town of Beijing is chosen for investigation and verification.It is found that irregular urban land uses have been sprawling from the Tong Zhou New Town into surrounding countryside,even crossing into Yan Jiao Town and Da Chang County in Hebei Province.To make Tong Zhou a compact new town with ecological countryside,a series of planning/ taxing tools including Urban Growth Boundaries、Urban Service Boundaries、Tax sharing、TDR are proposed.For long term effeteness,associated reforms on the Land Management Law、the Tax law、the Administrative Law、the Planning Law are also suggested.