The “middle triangle” is accelerating its rise.
Only half a month after the implementation plan of the 14th five year plan for the development of urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River was published, the Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area development plan (hereinafter referred to as the “plan”), the fourth and first national metropolitan area in Central China, was officially issued by the Hunan provincial government, and Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan became the first corner of the “central triangle”.
The scope of Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area includes the whole area of Changsha City, the central urban area of Zhuzhou and Liling City, the central urban area of Xiangtan, Shaoshan City and Xiangtan County, covering an area of 18900 square kilometers. In 2021, the permanent resident population was 14.84 million and the total economic output was 1.79 trillion yuan. It is the core growth pole of HunanP align = “center” regional scope of Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area photo source: development plan of Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area
Previously, when the national development and Reform Commission approved, the positioning of the Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area was to “improve the support capacity for the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and better promote the high-quality development of the Yangtze River economic belt and the central region”, and it was also mentioned in this plan that “lead and demonstrate in promoting common prosperity”.
In addition, the plan clearly proposes to “promote the slimming and fitness of the central urban area of Changsha”, including appropriately reducing the development intensity and population density of the central urban area. This is rare in the development planning of national metropolitan areas.
As the first national metropolitan area development plan approved for implementation in the central region, why did Changsha receive the task of “slimming down”? How will Zhuzhou, Xiangtan and surrounding towns accelerate their rise with the help of undertaking transfer and support the “one pole” of urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River?
“slimming and fitness”
Before that, the signal of “slimming down” in Changsha had been sent out.
The implementation plan of the 14th five year plan for the development of urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River clearly mentioned that Wuhan and Changsha should be promoted to reasonably and orderly ease the general manufacturing industry, guide the optimal layout of high-quality public service resources and extend to the surrounding areas, and gradually reduce the population density of Jianghan District and other urban areas with excessive population density in Wuhan.
Now the boots fall to the ground. The plan shows that Changsha will focus on population, industry, infrastructure, medical and educational resources and other aspects to promote the function of the central urban area to Zhuzhou Xiangtan and its surrounding towns: “strengthen the spatial control of the central urban area of Changsha, appropriately reduce the development intensity and population density of the central urban area, and orderly dredge the functions and facilities such as general manufacturing industry, regional professional market and logistics base, as well as the excessively concentrated public service resources such as medical treatment, education and sports in provinces and cities.”
Sort out the previously released national metropolitan area plan. The Nanjing metropolitan area development plan defines the central urban area as “stronger and better”, and reasonably control the development intensity and construction land plot ratio of the central urban area;
The development plan of Fuzhou metropolitan area is positioned as “optimization and upgrading” for the central urban area, so as to enhance the comprehensive service function of building Fuzhou into an international metropolis;
The positioning of the central urban area in the Chengdu metropolitan area development plan is also “optimized and improved”. Taking advantage of the high development advantages of the main urban area, it can drive the development of surrounding central cities and small towns
Why did Changsha receive the task of “slimming and fitness”?
Peng Zhimin, counselor of the Hubei provincial government and director of the Yangtze River Basin Economic Research Institute of the Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, told uncle Cheng that the sofa exhibition has been rapid in recent decades, and the industry and population have expanded rapidly. As a metropolitan area, Chang Zhu Tan actually competes with each other. The reason for proposing “slimming and fitness” may also be based on the consideration of urban division of labor.
“In this way, Changsha can free up its hands to develop some high-tech industries and cultural and creative industries, which may form some differences at different levels (within the metropolitan area).” Peng Zhimin said.
In fact, as early as last October, the outline of the plan for ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin issued by the State Council entrusted important tasks to the three mega cities of Xi’an, Zhengzhou and Jinan. At the same time, it stressed twice “promoting the slimming and fitness of mega cities”.
Although there are special restrictive factors such as water resources in the Yellow River Basin, it is the general trend to move from scale expansion to connotation development.
Similar to Zhengzhou, Changsha is also regarded as one of the fastest growing cities in the past 20 years. From 2000 to 2020, Changsha’s GDP increased from 72.085 billion yuan to 1214252 billion yuan, an increase of 16.84 times.
At the same time, the industrial added value increased from 22.648 billion yuan to 346588 billion yuan, an increase of 15.3 times. The rapid growth of industry is also an important support for economic take-off.
It is also obvious in urban scale and population scale. From 2000 to 2020, the urban area of Changsha increased from 556.33 square kilometers to 2150.9 square kilometers, and the permanent resident population increased from 6.1387 million to 100608 million, promoted to the ranks of mega cities .
This is an important reason to promote the “slimming and fitness” in the central urban area of Changsha. Xiao Jincheng, a researcher at the China Macroeconomic Research Institute, previously told uncle Cheng that now major cities have a trend of accelerating agglomeration, but it is easy to produce many problems after “getting bigger and bigger”.
Planning and building a modern metropolitan area will be a direction of “slimming, reducing and increasing efficiency”, so that some functions can reach the surrounding cities, form closer industrial and economic ties, and realize the transformation of spatial organization.
“undertaking relief”
The three cities of Chang Zhu Tan are distributed in a “pin” shape along the Xiangjiang River, and the distance between the two cities in the center of the city is less than 50 kilometers. From the planning of the opening of the “Chang Zhu Tan economic zone” in 1984 to the joint efforts of the three cities to create a national central city, the exploration of Chang Zhu Tan integration has continued to this day, but it has always been difficult at the landing level.
The development research center of Hunan Provincial People’s government put forward in the “obstacles and Countermeasures to promote the integration of Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan” released in July 2018 that Changsha is in a period of agglomeration and development of “robbing people”, “funds” and “projects”, constantly attracting resources from surrounding areas including Zhuzhou and Xiangtan, and the competitive relationship between three cities is greater than the cooperative relationship .
In fact, problems such as unbalanced and insufficient development within the metropolitan area, insufficient industrial integration and coordination, and the level of division of labor and cooperation among cities need to be improved are common problems encountered in the process of coordinated development of almost all regions. However, with the “slimming and fitness” in the central urban area of Changsha, it may bring new opportunities.
According to the plan, in the part of “promoting slimming and fitness in the central urban area of Changsha”, it is proposed to orderly ease the functions and facilities such as general manufacturing industry, regional professional market and logistics base, as well as the excessive concentration of provincial and municipal public service resources such as medical treatment, education and sports.
In the part of “improving the development quality of Zhuzhou and Xiangtan”, the first emphasis is to take the initiative to undertake the industrial transfer and function relief of Changsha Based on the characteristic resources and industrial foundation, and strengthen the cooperation and supporting ability and development support ability in the metropolitan area.
The most important thing is to promote the development of industrial differentiation by clarifying the positioning of urban development. Among them, Changsha is building an “innovation Valley” led by equipment manufacturing, electronic information and biomedicine; Zhuzhou will build a “power Valley” dominated by rail transit, aerospace and new energy vehicles; Xiangtan is building a “smart manufacturing Valley” dominated by the intensive processing of intelligent equipment, automobiles and parts, and steel.
According to Peng Zhimin, Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan have broad space for division of labor and cooperation at the industrial level. Changsha is known as the capital of construction machinery, and Xiangtan has also built some supporting industrial parks of construction machinery, which began to play the role of division of labor and supporting. In addition, Zhuzhou’s aviation power and locomotive power industries also have a solid foundation.
On the one hand, establish a major industrial coordination mechanism to promote the complementary advantages and integrated development of Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan; On the other hand, it is to deepen the coordinated development of scientific and technological innovation, jointly build a highland of R & D and innovation, jointly tackle key core technologies, promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and create an integrated innovation Shenzhen New Industries Biomedical Engineering Co.Ltd(300832) system.
Xiangtan and Zhuzhou also showed positive performance. Not long ago, the Zhuzhou Xiangtan integrated development affairs center, mayor of Xiangtan, was officially listed. The relevant person in charge said that major breakthroughs would be made in the interconnection of transportation facilities, deepening industrial integration and complementarity, and optimizing public services.
key “corner”
For example, Shanghai is in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. For the “middle triangle”, what is most often criticized is the lack of “leader”.
Previously, the outline of the national 14th five year plan proposed to promote the coordinated development of urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, accelerate the construction of Wuhan and Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan areas, and build an important growth pole in the country. It can be seen that Wuhan and Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area play an important strategic role and are considered to be important supporting points to promote the development of urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.
From the perspective of 2021, the regional GDP, industrial added value, local general public budget revenue, total import and export volume and actually used foreign capital of Changzhutan metropolitan area will reach 1789.3 billion yuan, 571.2 billion yuan, 145.4 billion yuan, 52 billion US dollars and 2.07 billion US dollars, accounting for 38.8%, 40.3%, 44.7%, 56.2% and 85.6% of the province respectively. It is a proper core growth pole.
However, from the perspective of urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area still lags far behind Wuhan metropolitan area . In 2021, the total economic volume of the Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area will be 1.79 trillion yuan, while that of the Wuhan metropolitan area, also known as the “middle triangle”, will be 3.01 trillion yuan. From the perspective of hard indicators, continuing to expand the total volume is still the key to the supporting role of the Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area.
Of course, the small hinterland of Chang Zhu Tan metropolitan area is also a factor that can not be ignored. Not only does it lack the top-level configuration of “1 + 8” in Wuhan metropolitan area, but even the area of the metropolitan area is far smaller than that of Nanjing metropolitan area (27000 square kilometers), Fuzhou metropolitan area (26000 square kilometers) and Chengdu metropolitan area (26400 square kilometers), only 18900 square kilometers.
However, from the perspective of maturity and synergy, Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area has more advantages than Wuhan metropolitan area. Since the formal implementation of the integrated development strategy of Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan in 1997, it has been built and developed for more than 30 years. Now it has been approved as the first national metropolitan area in the central region, and the development speed will be further accelerated.
Reflected in the interconnection of infrastructure, according to the plan, the Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area adheres to the principle of optimization and improvement and moderate advance, plans the construction of major transportation infrastructure and logistics networks such as railway, highway, water and air, and focuses on building a national comprehensive transportation and logistics hub.
In addition, it will also build Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan Railway on the track, scientifically promote the development of Changsha subway, reserve the access conditions of new lines of Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan railway transportation, and gradually promote the “one network” of construction, management and transportation of Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan railway transportation.
According to the implementation plan of the 14th five year plan for the development of urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River will also build a highland of scientific and technological innovation with core competitiveness.
It is implemented in the Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area. It is mentioned in the plan that it will deepen the coordinated development of scientific and technological innovation and jointly carry out key technological research, including formulating the technological innovation roadmap of leading industries and leading industries in the national independent innovation demonstration zone of Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan, integrating resources and actively undertaking major national scientific and technological tasks.
Whether it is to expand the total amount or improve the quality, the key of Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area is to make a breakthrough in “integration”. The road map has been drawn. How to ensure its implementation is related to whether the Changsha Zhuzhou Xiangtan metropolitan area can become a key corner of the “middle triangle”, and whether the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River can undertake a greater mission and play a greater role in promoting national high-quality development.
