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HOW ASIA'S TRANSFORMATION COULD SHAPE THE WORLD'S URBAN FUTURE

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News + Politics


HOW ASIA'S TRANSFORMATION COULD SHAPE THE WORLD'S URBAN FUTURE

By Parag Khanna

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Residents in an impoverished village in Manila, the Philippines, with an overlay
of a digital city plan.
SourceJes Aznar/Getty


WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Asians have shown they can lead the global economy. Can they also show the world
a sustainable urban future for billions of people? 

By Parag Khanna

January 17, 2019
OZY takes you to stunning urban facelifts reshaping cities, and life in
them.OZY's City Futures brings you urban facelifts reshaping life, from
crumbling commercial capitals to war-zone warrens.

Asia is ground zero for the most significant challenge of the 21st century:
sustainable urbanization. If the billions of people cramming into the cities of
the Pacific Rim and South Asia can not only maintain their breakneck growth but
do so without cooking the planet, mankind will have dodged a major bullet. The
scale of the challenge for Asia is only growing: Just under half of all Asians
live in cities, compared to roughly 82 percent of Americans and 74 percent of
Europeans. Asians are on the move to catch up — but can they leapfrog at the
same time?

The continent’s rapidly modernizing cities are driving the region’s accelerating
connectivity and growth. Each subregion of Asia has a growing number of thriving
urban hubs: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh and Doha in the Gulf region; Istanbul, Tel
Aviv and Tehran in West Asia; Karachi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai in South
Asia; and all of East Asia and Southeast Asia’s metropolises, from Tokyo to
Shanghai, Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City and Manila to Jakarta. Nine of the 10
busiest international flight connections in the world are between Asian cities,
with only the pairing of New York and Toronto representing North America on the
list. The ancient Silk Road routes are back in hyper-drive, with airlines,
high-speed railways and highways augmented with internet cables.

Additionally, Asia has had nearly 50 years of the “Tiger economies” — South
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore — which took off by establishing special
economic zones (SEZs) to attract foreign investment into factory towns and climb
the rungs of global value chains. China caught on 40 years ago, when Deng
Xiaoping made Shenzhen the country’s first SEZ; within a decade, China had
become the world’s factory floor. Now the model has spread to Vietnam and
Indonesia, India and Oman, with countries across Asia designating SEZs as entry
and exit points for intermediate and finished goods. Like holes in a weaving
board, these nodes capture the threads of commerce that tie Asians closer
together.

> Whether Asians can scale the innovations of their experimental zones to the
> level of their many megalopolis cities is therefore the question.

For sure, Asia is also home to the most ambitious “smart city” projects, from
the United Arab Emirates’ Masdar to India’s Amaravati and China’s Tianjin
Eco-City, districts aiming to go completely green with driverless electric cars
and zero-emissions buildings. But the combined population of all of these
startup cities could fit inside one neighborhood of China’s Chongqing city.

Whether Asians can scale the innovations of their experimental zones to the
level of their many megalopolis cities is therefore the question whose answer
will hold lessons for the rest of the world too.

 

Asia’s megacities have already reached a scale that is unimaginable in the West,
where the largest metropolises rarely exceed 10 million residents. Asia’s
mammoth cities are sprawling archipelagos spanning vast areas, home to upwards
of 60 million people, and they experience nearly a million new arrivals every
week, about two-thirds of the global total.

 
        

A rendering of Amaravati, India.

Source SURBANA JURONG PRIVATE LIMITED

 
        

A rendering of the new capital city for the southern Indian state of Andhra
Pradesh, Amaravati, which is being built on the banks of the Krishna River.

Source SURBANA JURONG PRIVATE LIMITED

For the most part, Asia’s spectacular city growth has been good for its
residents. Many larger Asian cities are becoming richer, and the overall quality
of life for city dwellers is improving. Japan, South Korea and China’s wealthy
coastal provinces have accumulated the fiscal capacity, political will and
technological know-how to deploy quality infrastructure, housing, utilities and
services for the masses.



But sprawl, congestion, unemployment and slums are critical impediments in
Asia’s even bigger swath of high-growth countries stretching from Pakistan
through India and all of Southeast Asia to the Philippines. The South and
Southeast Asian regions have a combined population of more than 2.5 billion,
eclipsing that of China. But New Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, Karachi, Dhaka and
Manila all rank among Asia’s densest and least-developed cities. The secondary
cities of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines are growing even faster, with
even poorer infrastructure quality.

Can Asia’s teeming and congested megacities of Mumbai and Manila learn
sustainability from Tokyo and Singapore as quickly as they are trading with
them? Solutions are very much within reach. Shanghai also once suffered from
acute air pollution, but it has launched ambitious programs to produce clean
energy and promote electric vehicles. Shenzhen is seeking to balance its scale
with livability through new building regulations, carbon trading schemes and
electric cars. In Guangzhou, which has suffered from land and water shortages
due to overdevelopment, new construction in fertile areas is being dramatically
curtailed, and air pollution was reduced by 42 percent between 2012 and 2016.
These three cities and many others are benefiting from new national regulations
to curb industrial pollution of the air, land and riverways.

 
        
  

The city view of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City in Binhai New Area, north
China’s Tianjin. Inaugurated in 2008, it is designed to strengthen environmental
protection, conserve resources and build a harmonious society.

Source Li Ran/Xinhua/Alamy Live News

The falling cost of infrastructure and renewable energy could make similar
leapfrogging possible for those Asian megacities very near to the environmental
breaking point. In Karachi, Pakistan, a city suffering from power shortages and
an acute solid waste and sewage crisis, the government is investing heavily in
public transport and desalination. Desalination projects are also among the
largest investments in India today, as well as water recycling, affordable
housing and new electric scooter taxis. To cope with its high subsidence rate
stemming from rapid groundwater depletion, Bangkok is retrofitting its water
infrastructure with an aim toward higher efficiency and conservation. Hanoi —
currently the city where you’re most likely to be run over by a motorbike —
wants to phase the two-wheelers out within a decade and build an underground
metro. From container homes to reduce the consumption of concrete to “internet
of things” sensors to alleviate traffic, making Asia’s megacities smarter and
more sustainable can be done.

Even though Asia still has a long way to go, Europe is coming on strong as a
role model, business partner and investor in Asia’s sustainable transformation
as well. Entire European countries, including Germany, Italy and Spain, are at
or near grid parity, meaning that the cost of installing wind, solar and other
renewable power now pays for itself in operational savings to citizens and
businesses. Copenhagen, Paris, Vienna and Berlin lead the way in bike lanes,
public parks, green architecture and vertical agriculture — all innovations
desperately needed in Bangalore and Jakarta.

As Asia grows wealthier and older, its citizens want not just factory towns but
also walkable communities. German city planners designed the Tianjin Eco-City in
China and are underway with a similar master plan outside Ulaanbaatar, in
Mongolia. Siemens built Bangkok’s elevated light rail and is expanding Kuala
Lumpur’s while bidding to implement a dozen more across Asia. The European
Union’s International Urban Cooperation (IUC) program works with more than 30
pairs of cities bridging Europe and Asia to fund sustainability projects.
European and Asian cities now share guidance and case studies on platforms such
as Metropolis, which also convenes city officials to establish direct
city-to-city policy-transfer relationships across Eurasia.

The German architect Ole Scheeren has designed award-winning buildings such as
the Interlace in Singapore, the MahaNakhon tower in Bangkok and, in Ho Chi Minh
City, the Empire City project, where green design will meet the natural green of
Vietnam’s tropical flora. And for Asia’s masses, a dozen European companies have
developed low-cost 3D-printed homes made of snap-together parts.

Asians have proven they have the work ethic to take pole position in the world
economy. There’s every reason to be hopeful they will devote similar energy to
leading in sustainability as well.

 * Parag Khanna Contact Parag Khanna


January 17, 2019

TOPICS

 * ASIA
 * BUSINESS
 * Cities
 * Development
 * Environment
 * Opinion
 * Sustainability



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