Let's start with the conclusion, we now have the ability to realize that every family lives in a large villa. But the supporting infrastructure would encroach on too much arable land by U.S. standards. Therefore, at this stage, it is still necessary to focus on a certain density of housing, and a certain proportion of low-density housing can be released in the second and third lines.
One of the bloggers I follow, "Beijing Saidon", once had an interesting inference that the reason for the rapid decline in China's fertility rate is because the houses made by the Great Leap Forward in real estate in the past few decades are all high-plot ratio communities with more than ten floors and dozens of floors. Such a community is uncomfortable to live in, and it is naturally not suitable for childbirth. It also cites the fact that residential buildings such as the Khrushchev Building have been popularized in Eastern European countries for a long time, and as a result, the fertility rate in Eastern Europe is not high.
Therefore, we should learn from the United States and let go of single-family houses and townhouses, at least small and medium-sized cities.
Judging from the current population development situation, I think it is also possible for third-tier cities to let go of a spacious and comfortable large house with a low floor area ratio. Don't think about boosting fertility in big cities, this is a population black hole. Resources need to be tilted to areas with low stress and good environments, and people there need to be encouraged to have more children.
I found that several Internet influencers have similar views, and Ning Nanshan, a famous blogger in Shenzhen, has also made similar discoveries. These high-income middle-class people always feel that if they change to a bigger house, they will have more children. In fact, in developed countries, this group of people is the most reluctant to have children.
There are many factors that contribute to the decline in fertility, and I think it has something to do with whether or not you can live in a big house, but it doesn't have much to do with it. The United States, Canada, and Australia, which live in big houses, have not had more babies because of their big houses. The countries and regions with the highest fertility rates in the world are indeed cramped areas with poor living conditions and poor conditions. This is a common problem after entering the industrialized countries.
However, Sedon also makes an interesting point. He said that even if the villas were all released, not much land would be needed. 100 square meters per capita, according to the current average of 33 people are converted into 330 square meters, and each family builds a villa. All Chinese families need about 0The area of 9 Shandong Province, and this land only needs to replace all the idle homesteads back.
In fact, Americans themselves have made similar statistics, if the world's 8 billion people live in an American household of 246 square meters of villas (with American-style lawn yards). Just one Texas (690,000 square kilometers) can live in it all.
It seems that such a simple calculation is possible, but I always feel that my intuition is wrong.
My hometown is Jiujiang, Jiangxi, a third-tier city with a small population. Below is the size of the urban area shown on the satellite map.
Satellite aerial photography of Jiujiang City covers an area of 19,085 square kilometers. According to the 2021 edition of the China Urban Statistical Yearbook, Jiujiang has a built-up area of 158 square kilometers and an urban population of 960,000 (excluding the water area, I measured it on the map to be about 100 square kilometers). Jiujiang City has jurisdiction over three districts: Xunyang, Lianxi and Chaisang. At present, several jurisdictions in my hometown are basically connected. Just like the satellite map above, there is no obvious difference between urban and rural areas from the Yangtze River to the foot of Lushan Mountain. In the 30 years I grew up, the city has expanded tremendously.
I now live in Nanshan District, Shenzhen, with a total land area of 18753 square kilometers, excluding Nanshan, Tanglang Mountain, Xili Botanical Garden area is about the same as the area of my hometown. At present, Nanshan District has 8 sub-districts under its jurisdiction, and Nanshan District has a permanent population of 2 million. This population density has more than doubled that of his hometown, and the housing prices are also the highest in the country.
This is basically the density of first- and third-tier cities in China. How much land do American cities occupy?
Townhouses in the Boston areaBoston area is a relatively early developed area in the United States, and in fact, the living conditions are not too generous (compared to the United States), and most of them are townhouses. The Boston Metropolitan Area, on the other hand, has a population of 84660,000, with an area of 9,539 square kilometers across five states of huge urban agglomeration.
In other words, according to the urban planning of the Northeast United States, nearly 10,000 square kilometers of land will be allocated to Boston's 8 million people. 1The 90,000 square kilometers of land, excluding mountains and lakes, have basically been used up, and no agricultural land has been left.
The Boston metro area is an important part of the Northeast U.S. Urban Belt, and we plan it according to the "denser" cities (Boston Core) on the Northeast Coast of the United States. Cities with a population of 20 million, such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou, need 20,000 square kilometers of land. And there are a large number of people who need to live in a townhouse, and not everyone can live in a big house like American movies.
That's the norm on the more crowded East Coast of the United States. In fact, according to the urban planning of the vast and sparsely populated Midwest of the United States, the land in the country is even more insufficient. For example, Denver has a built-up area of 1,293 square kilometers. This area is about the same size as Shanghai, but Shanghai has a population of 27 million, while the Denver area has a population of only 2.8 million and the core area has just over 700,000 people.
People who work in the Pearl River Delta should be familiar with the fact that many small and medium-sized factories are located in densely populated urban villages with convenient transportation, and it also leads to a problem, such a huge urban industrial synergy, people live scattered, what to do with the original factory. Whether the factory should be adjusted in location, whether it should be expanded, whether it should build a new factory. To develop development zones in China, first of all, it is necessary to do a good job of connecting water, electricity, roads, and land leveling to the three links and one level.
The construction of rural homesteads should also expand the scale of cities, and if the American-style houses (even without yards, they are just the size of homesteads that are common in rural areas), the current residential areas in all cities will be several times larger. It is difficult to commute to this breadth of urban public transport at present. You can imagine that if the community you live in is an area with a diameter of several kilometers, it takes more than ten minutes for a bus to leave the community with a full load, and you can imagine how early you have to get up in the morning if you are not late for work.
In the suburbs of Phoenix, there is no way to engage in public transportation in such residential areas, and every household can only travel by car, which in turn forces every household to buy a car, at least the highway viaduct must also double the current number of cars, and the commuting requirement of 6.8 billion vehicles.
This is of course good for GDP, but road expansion, bridge and paving also do not occupy land. In this way, the company unit and the factory will also expand the land to repair the parking lot.
Therefore, planning a house according to the American living conditions expands more than just the area of the house. It is to expand the area of all functional areas throughout the city.
Currently 2700 million Americans live in cities. The built-up area of American cities is 300,000 square kilometers, which is twice the size of Guangdong Province.
China's current urban built-up area, I checked a few sets of data, may be the smallest difference in statistical caliber 670,000 square kilometers, the largest is 100,000 square kilometers. There are 800 million Chinese living in cities now (there are also data written about 600 million, and it is estimated that this is the registered population of local cities), which may slowly grow to 1.1 billion in the future. By American standards, 1.2 million square kilometers of land are needed to build a city. This is equivalent to the arable area of the whole country, even if it is cut off half and the national conditions of our country are not allowed, then cut it in half, and then cut it like this, there is no need to discuss that everyone lives in a big house.
It is also evident from the ranking of urban built-up area that American cities waste a huge amount of land.
Below is an aerial shot of Los Angeles, with only the higher density of buildings in the center, and the entire valley is mostly filled with buildings. The built-up area of Los Angeles is 2 of that of Shanghai5 times. But Los Angeles is only the sixth largest city built in the United States.
Aerial shot of the heart of Los Angeles.
Downtown street view above.
The built-up area of cities in the United States, China's super-large cities can only rank more than ten, and the built-up area of China's cities, even if the first few giant cities are small compared with the exaggerated urban area of the United States.
1. Chongqing 16408
1. Beijing 1600 (some data rank Beijing first, and some Chongqing ranks first).
2. Guangzhou 136602
6. Tianjin 126446
4. Shanghai 1242
5. Dongguan 1194 31
6. Chengdu 106368
7. Shenzhen 96217
8. Wuhan 92597
9. Nanjing 88573
10, Hangzhou 82941
However, in the third and fourth-tier cities, where the population is not large, there is no need for the newly developed community to build a floor elevator room, you can build some small western-style buildings + some townhouse houses, so the increase in land is not much. Now the planned urban residential area is 45 million mu, which is actually an increase of 50% is 150,000 square kilometers.
There are also many such communities in China, and they are not mainstream now. In particular, first-tier cities are rare, and in the era of population decline in the future, urban renewal can engage in more low-density communities. The neighborhood near Sakata Hua:
Sakata Huawei near Cell 1
Sakata Huawei near Cell 2
The community 3 near Bantian Huawei is a community near Huawei's headquarters in Shenzhen, in fact, this kind of high-rise, western-style houses, and townhouses can also achieve a moderate degree of living environment, population density and convenient transportation.
China's current productivity is sufficient, and every household can be realized. But this would be tantamount to at least doubling the size of the city. In the future, the population of rural areas will be basically concentrated in cities, and the release of existing homesteads can be considered as a major upgrade of the living environment of the Chinese people.