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Hangzhou
Cities 48 (2015) 42–54
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Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities
City profile
Hangzhou Zhu Qian School of Planning, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo N2L 3G1, Canada
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 28 April 2015 Received in revised form 1 June 2015 Accepted 1 June 2015
Keywords: Hangzhou Urban forms Urban development Population Housing Land use
a b s t r a c t Once an ancient capital of China, Hangzhou has transformed to a post-socialist city that faces profound changes and critical challenges in various aspects of urban development such as historical legacies, market-oriented urban economy, expansive urban spatial patterns, population management, land use restructuring, and affordable housing provision. Under the increasingly stronger market power, the city strives to reposition itself to be an important economic center in the Yangtze River Delta Region, through strategic and innovative urban growth agenda. This profile identifies some fundamental issues and processes that underscore Hangzhou’s recent urban development and presents future prospect for a coastal metropolis with regional significance. Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, is located at the southern wing of the Yangtze River Delta, the west of Hangzhou Bay, and the lower reaches of the Qiantang River. About 180 km from the ‘dragon head’ Shanghai, Hangzhou is the second largest metropolis in the Yangtze River Delta Region (Fig. 1). Named ‘the Land of Fish and Rice’ and ‘the Paradise on the Earth’ by scholars and writers, the city is well known for its picturesque natural landscape and environment – 65.6% of its land area is hilly and mountainous (with an elevation range between 200 and 1100 meters) distributed in the west, middle and south, and 26.4% of its land area plain (with a surface elevation range between 2 and 10 m) in its northeast, leaving 8% of the area water bodies. Hangzhou is the origin city of the world’s longest artificial canal – the Grand Canal (Hangzhou Municipal Government, 2007). The city’s northern subtropical monsoon climate creates four distinct seasons with a mild winter and a ‘hotpot’ feeling summer. Hangzhou’s main city (city proper) has nine urban administrative districts – Shangcheng, Xiacheng, Binjiang, Jianggan, Gongshu, Xihu, Xiaoshan, Yuhang and Fuyang. They constitute the core of the Hangzhou Metropolitan Area that also includes two counties (Tonglu and Chun’an) and two country-level cities (Jiande and Lin’an). In 2013, urban resident annual per capita disposable income is 39,310 yuan; and rural resident annual per capita net income is 18,923 yuan in Hangzhou Metropolitan Area (Hangzhou Statistical Bureau, 2014).
E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.06.004 0264-2751/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A city profile of Hangzhou is desirable for several reasons. First, the city has a long history of five thousand years and is one of China’s Seven Ancient Capitals. Many of the city’s cultural landscape and historic relics can still been appreciated. Second, Hangzhou is a transitional city known for its prosperous non-state economy, especially Town and Village Enterprises and domestic private industries. Third, the city is a representative coastal metropolis that has experienced almost all significant challenges in local economy since the economic reform. Typical urban strategies such as development zones, administrative annexation, and new CBD have transformed the city. Meanwhile, the post-reform inter-city competition requires Hangzhou to reposition its urban economy and restructure its urban space. Fourth, Hangzhou has been one of the pilot cities for policy initiatives such as land banking, land acquisition compensation, and economic comfortable housing. This profile starts with Hangzhou’s history in relation to the current city, and then delineates its urban economy, urban form evolution and master plans, urban population, followed by its recent land use restructuring. The later part of the profile involves a relatively detailed discussion about Hangzhou’s housing provision with specific reference to its public housing programs and housing density spatial restructuring. The profile concludes with discussion on future developments of the city. 2. History and present A county government seat in the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC) and then the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279),
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Fig. 1. Location of Hangzhou in the Yangtze River Delta Region and China. Source: by the author.
Hangzhou’s origin can be dated back to the Neolithic period more than five thousand years ago, marked by the well-documented Hemudu culture. The city’s historic urban evolution has been defined, driven, and constrained by three major waters: the West Lake, the Qiantang River, and the Grand Canal (Fu, 1985). The urban economy of Hangzhou, the northbound origin of the Grand Canal leading to the north end in Beijing, was closely knitted with rich water meshes in the region. The West Lake and its neighboring mountains anchored the city’s internal structure formation and became the urban physical essentials in early urban development in the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing (1644–1912) Dynasties. Important urban components such as city walls and gates, bridges, administrative agencies, religious structures, and attractions were more or less connected to the West Lake and its mountainous milieu, because Chinese geomancy believed that the West Lake
and its surroundings offered the city vigor. As early as in the Five Dynasties (907–960), enhanced dykes harnessed strong tides of the Qiantang River and made the River a contributor rather than a threat to Hangzhou’s wellbeing. During the Ming and the Qing, Hangzhou rose to be a regional commercial and trading hub and the city’s quality silk, tea, and handicrafts attracted merchants from afar; the Renhe County Gazette records that half of the Hangzhou people was in business or trading (Fu, 1985; Wang, 1999). In the late Ming, a Hangzhou-based business tycoon had a fleet of a hundred ships exporting local products to Japan, Luzon, and Indochina coasts. The economic success led to regional growth – the number of towns in the great Hangzhou region doubled. However, since the mid-19th century Hangzhou’s regional importance has been eclipsed by the rise of Shanghai that was originally opened as a treaty port. The rich history and unique geographical
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situation make Hangzhou well known for its beautiful natural landscape, historic cultural legacies, traditional urban landmarks, and small handicrafts. Today, Hangzhou is a representative of coastal metropolises and an integral part of the emerging global economic powerhouse headed by Shanghai. The Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration includes 14 cities among which Hangzhou is one of the three anchors along with Nanjing and Shanghai. As of 2013, Hangzhou’s per capita GDP exceeds USD $19,000. While its primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors have a respective share of 3.2%, 43.9%, and 52.9% in terms of industrial production, the city has 10.8% of its employment population in the primary sector, 44.8% in the secondary sector, and 44.4% in the tertiary sector. The Hangzhou Metropolitan Area covers 16,596 square kilometers with a population of 8.84 million, generating a population density of 533 persons per square kilometer. The main city covers 4876 square kilometers with a total of 7.08 million residents. The main city sustains a population density of 1453 persons per square kilometer, with much higher density registered in two oldest urban districts Shangcheng and Xiacheng – 19,517 and 17,142 persons per square kilometer respectively (Hangzhou Statistical Bureau, 2014). The most recent two national censuses show that Hangzhou’s urbanization rate increased from 58.6% in 2000 to 70.0% in 2010.
3. Urban economy Hangzhou’s shadow economic location in the Yangtze River Delta Region relative to strong competitors such as Shanghai, Suzhou, and Ningbo requires innovative and strategic economic policies to attract and sustain various types of investments in fierce inter-city competitions. Since the economic reform, Hangzhou’s urban economy has witnessed three different phases. The first phase is a resource- and labor-intensive period between 1978 and 1992 when urban industries were still marked by the planned economy legacy that often hindered economic restructuring. The second phase is a capital- and technology-intensive incipient period between 1993 and 2003 when market-oriented state-owned and collective enterprise reforms and property rights reform accelerated the rise of non-state enterprises which gave strong impetus to local economic growth. The most recent phase since 2004 is a period that highlights capital-, technology-, and knowledge-intensive industries. Hangzhou’s recent economic restructuring identifies cultural and creative industry, tourism and leisure, financial services, e-commerce, information technology, advanced equipment industry, biomedicine, and sustainable energy as its major industries for future development. Booming non-state-owned industries play an increasingly critical role in radically transforming local economy. In the so-called rural urbanization, the Hangzhou Metropolitan Area’s Town and Village Enterprise (TVE) output started with a mere US $9.7 million or 0.48% of the total local industrial output in 1978, but the output of (reformed) TVEs jumped to US $98,588 million or 82.64% of the total local industrial output in 2008. TVEs hire 62.45% of the total workers in the Hangzhou Metropolitan Area (Wu & Zhang, 2012). Domestic private enterprises such as Wahaha, a food and beverage company, and more recently, Alibaba, an e-commerce company, have produced some of the most successful business tycoons in China. Hangzhou’s ability to secure tremendously large amount of land through annexations since the 1990s demonstrates a critical power and constitutional rights of its local authorities. Among four national development zones in the main city, Hangzhou High Technological Development Zone accommodates knowledge- and technology-intensive industries; Hangzhou Economic and
Technological Development Zone hosts pharmaceutical, chemical, machinery and electronics, textiles, as well as export processing industries; Xiaoshan Economic and Technological Development Zone is home to automobile, construction materials, export processing, and light industries; and Zhijiang Tourism and Holiday Development Zone develops theme parks, holiday resorts, museums and recreation facilities. Hangzhou’s most recent mega project is its new CBD – the Qianjiang New City along the northwest shore of the Qiantang River. After more than ten year’s development, the Qianjiang New City is becoming a receiver of many important financial, commercial, institutional, civic, entertainment functions of the city (Qian, 2011). Local authorities have particularly put efforts in financial incentives, infrastructure development, investment environments, and welcoming attitudes towards preferential investors, aiming to further improve the reputation and market potential of the city. Tourism has long been one of Hangzhou’s competitive advantages in economic growth. Because of its rich cultural landscape and historical relics, Hangzhou’s West Lake has always been at the center of the prosperous heritage and tourism industry. Municipal organizations such as the West Lake Scenic District Management Committee and the Hangzhou Tourism Committee exercise their power and responsibilities to protect and promote the West Lake resort area that comprises numerous temples, pagodas, pavilions, gardens, as well as causeways and artificial islands. In 2001, the Hangzhou Municipal Government approved the ‘West Lake Westward Expansion’ Plan (Xihu Xijin), aiming to create a West Lake scenic zone that is ‘busy in the East; lively in the South; tranquil in the West; refined in the North and stunning in the Centre’. The West Lake South Periphery Integration Project was launched first, covering an area of over 50 ha and sharing some 27% of the road surface area around the Lake (Barmé, 2015). The project connects the disparate major parks along the eastern and southern shores of the Lake and creates a five-kilometer long ‘Lake Scenic Belt’, echoing an old saying that the West Lake is ‘misty hills on three sides with a city on the fourth’. The recently completed Master Yang Causeway project increases the expanse of the Lake by one sixth, to 6.4 square kilometers. Another recently unveiled ‘West Lake World’ project (Xihu Tiandi) converted a previously walled compound occupied by party-state officials into a trendy dining and entertainment district on the eastern shore of the West Lake. This commercial success reuses many of the large private homes as restaurants and cafes. Featuring more than 100 scenic spots, over 20 museums and memorials in eleven different scenic regions, the West Lake scenic area has been listed in the World Heritage Sites since 2011 (Fig. 2). Hangzhou’s attractions cover a wide range of interests such as early Chinese civilization, Chinese ancient ceramics, Chinese tea culture and history, traditional Chinese medicine, the West Lake and its surrounding amenities, the Grand Canal culture, architectural arts, traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, as well as silk culture and history (Figs. 3 and 4). Hangzhou revamps its traditional tourism business and wisely capitalizes on its tourism economy in recent years. The tourism industry experienced tremendous boom between 1995 and 2013 (Figs. 5 and 6). In 2013, the city attracted 97.25 million international and domestic visitors, a 4.5-time increase since 1995. The tourism industry revenue reached 160.4 billion yuan in 2013, a stunning increase from 10.6 billion yuan in 1995. Tourism serves as a catalyst for other economic sectors especially tertiary sectors in the city. However, Hangzhou’s tourism development needs to address strategic and practical issues in the future. For instance, some museums could play more contributive role in local tourism. Research contends that their poor accessibility, isolated locations from major attractions, insufficient complementarity with peripheral attractions, and limited carrying capacity are the primary limitations
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Fig. 2. Covering an area of 1150 ha, Xixi National Wetland Park features various ponds, lakes and swamps and becomes home to many birds, aquatic animals, and vegetation. Source: by the author.
Fig. 3. Southern Song Imperial Street District, once only accessible to the Emperor and his entourage, becomes a historic commercial district popular among visitors and locals. Source: by the author.
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Fig. 4. Historic commercial and neighborhood strips along both sides of the Grand Canal are part of Hangzhou’s Grand Canal Culture promotion. Source: by the author.
Fig. 5. Hangzhou’s tourism industry revenue between 1995 and 2013. Source: Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
(Sheng & Lo, 2010). The local authorities could develop proactive tourism plans and incorporate innovative marketing strategies. Since the majority of Hangzhou’s attractions are publicly owned, more considerations should be given to how public resources in local tourism can be utilized in a more effective way. Attractions with local, regional, or international cultural, social, economic, or heritage significance could be better marketed and more conveniently connected to different types of tourists.
4. Urban forms and master plans Hangzhou’s spatial form evolution includes several periods. The spatial pattern between the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) and the Liberation in 1949 was fairly stable when the three major waters and a city moat defined the city. From 1949 to the early 1960s, the city grew along three axes of the Grand Canal, the West Lake and the Qiantang River. The socialist industrialization after the late
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Fig. 6. Numbers of visitors to Hangzhou between 1995 and 2013. Source: Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
1950s helped to form a hand-shaped pattern and by the mid-1980s, Hangzhou had a palm-shaped built-up area with the development along main traffic corridors and the north shore of the Qiantang River resembling five fingers. The areas between the ‘fingers’ were quickly filled up during large-scale urban development in the late 1980s and the 1990s, morphing into a fanlike urban form. Since the 1990s, Hangzhou has had ambitious annexation of three large neighboring counties. Binjiang District, part of the former Xiaoshan County, was established through annexation in December 1996. Then Xiaoshan and Yuhang counties were annexed and became urban administrative districts in March 2001. In December 2014, Fuyang was annexed and become Hangzhou’s newest urban district. The annexations extended Hangzhou’s urban areas across the Qiantang River, resulting in a gigantic butterfly shape (Fig. 7). Following the urban expansive strategy of ‘crossing the Qiantang River and developing southward’ (Kuajiang Fazhan) proposed by the Hangzhou Municipal Government in the late 1990s, the rapid development along the Qiantang River drove the eastward and southward expansion of built-up areas. From 1978 to 2008, Hangzhou’s built-up area expanded from 319 to 863 square kilometers. Since 1949, Hangzhou’s master plans have changed from its ideologically bound urban agenda for state socialism to a market-oriented one under current transitional economy. ‘A tourist city for sightseeing, recuperation, and culture, with reasonable light industry development’ was articulated in its 1953 mater plan for the First Five-Year Plan (1953–1957). This master plan followed the per capita land use quota standard set by the National Basic Construction Commission for the city’s planned population of 700 thousand in a total land area of 5030 ha. The entire urban area was simplistically divided into four zones: tourism zone, cultural and educational zone, industrial zone, as well as residential zone. An administrative center for provincial and municipal agencies was defined in the master plan. Warehouse and dockland zones were planned along railways and the Grand Canal. Then ‘a heavy industry-based comprehensive industrial city’ became the overarching goal in the city’s 1958 master plan to facilitate speedy urban industrialization during the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961). This master plan set up ten industrial zones: Banshan heavy industrial zone for metallurgy and machinery; Gongchenqiao light industrial
zone for textile and papermaking; Jianggan light industrial zone for timber processing and food industry; Xianlinbu mining industry zone; Shangsi construction material zone; Pingyao special industrial zone; Xiaoshan industrial zone; Huilongshan chemical engineering industrial zone; Fuyang industrial zone for papermaking and forestry; and the extant industries in the urban core. Some of Hangzhou’s current industrial areas were initially developed during that period. In its first post-reform master plan approved by the State Council in 1981 (Fig. 8), Hangzhou set its urban growth orientation to be ‘a provincial administrative seat, a listed Historic and Cultural Famous City, and a national major tourist city’. The 1981 master plan set 1985 as the year for achieving its short-term planning objectives and 2000 as the year for its long-term planning vision. This master plan imposed strict control of population growth in the main city through industrial suburbanization, economic cluster restructuring, satellite or sub-center town development, and strict migration policy. It prioritized tourism industry and encouraged rural individuals and collectives to build vernacular style structures that match their surrounding amenities, contributing to the tourism development. The 1981 master plan followed the tenet of ‘conserving the West Lake, developing areas along the Qiantang River, redeveloping the old city, improving public service facilities, restructuring urban industries, and erecting satellite towns’. The newly planned areas along the Qiantang River were for tourism, cultural and educational, science and research, and residential uses. The city’s master plan proposal (1996–2010) defined Hangzhou as ‘an international tourist city and national Historic and Cultural Famous City, a central city in the Yangtze River Delta Region, and the political, economic, scientific-educational, and cultural center of Zhejiang Province’. After the annexation of Xiaoshan and Yuhang counties, this proposal was revised upon the request from the State Council. Hangzhou’s most recent master plan (2001–2020) added to its 1996 proposal for its future development orientation to be a modern city that would, ‘further contribute to the Yangtze River Delta Region as one of the core cities led by Shanghai; continue to be the provincial political, economic, cultural, and educational center; and enhance the city’s scientific innovation and regional comprehensive services’
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Fig. 7. Hangzhou’s spatial form evolution. Source: Hangzhou Municipal Government (2002). Modified by the author.
(Hangzhou Municipal Government, 2007) (Fig. 9). This master plan sets 2050 for its long-term vision with detailed configurations specified for 2020. It aims to control urban land uses within 370 square kilometers and urban permanent population within 6.5 million in the city proper by 2020. Urban expansion along the Qiangtang River is emphasized again. Six suburban centers for polycentric growth and six ecological belts connecting suburban or exurban ecological, green, and agricultural areas are articulated in the mater plan. Ten historic and cultural districts and sixteen historic street blocks are designated for conservation. Over time, Hangzhou’s efforts in mitigating built environment challenges and beatifying urban amenities have been recognized by domestic and overseas organizations, earning titles such as the United Nations Habitat Award, China Habitat Environment Prize, International Garden City, and National Environment Protection Model City. In 2013, Hangzhou was ranked No. 1 in Forbes’ Best Commercial Cities in Mainland China and topped China’s Happiest Cities (by the Xinhua News Agency) for ten consecutive years. 5. Urban population During the entire pre-reform period between 1949 and 1978, there were both government-sanctioned rural-to-urban and urban-to-rural migrations following radical political movements
and ambitious economic agenda. The amount of migrants involved in these population movements was huge. At the beginning of the People’s Republic, the politico-economic principle of transforming Hangzhou from a consumption center into a production center meant that the city required a large labor force in productive industries, which was accompanied by a spontaneously returning urban population who had fled to rural areas during the wars. Hangzhou’s urban population increased from 473,800 in 1949 to 657,400 in 1957, which was a 38.75% growth (Zou, Liu, & Zou, 2007). The years between 1958 and 1960 witnessed fast ostensible urbanization because of a series of radical industrial restructuring toward a heavy industry dominated local economy. The influx of 270 thousand rural residents into the city resulted in an unprecedented 27.2% urban population increase during these three years. Moreover, the urban population statistics did not include seasonal hires from rural areas for urban industry ‘great leap forward’, whose temporary urban resident status was not counted in the census (Hangzhou Research Team, 2008). Between 1961 and 1963, and then in 1969, several rounds of ‘sending urban residents down to rural areas’ (Xiafang) were implemented. During the Third Five-Year Plan (1963–1967), peasant-turned-workers in the city were requested to return to their villages. Hangzhou’s urban population share dropped from 33.66% in 1959 to 22.95% in 1978. The urban population proportion did not revert to 33.6% until 1997, primarily due to the strict
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Fig. 8. Hangzhou’s 1981 Land Use Plan, the city’s first post-reform plan. Source: Hangzhou Municipal Planning Bureau Archive, digitized by the author.
implementation of the urban household registration system (Propaganda Division of Hangzhou Communist Party, 1999) (Fig. 10).
Just a few years after the economic reform, the reinstating of the ‘sent-down’ resident’s urban registration status increased the city’s urban population to 927 thousand in 1982. In response to rapid
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Fig. 9. Hangzhou Master Plan (2001–2020). Source: Hangzhou Municipal Planning Bureau, digitized and revised by the author.
Fig. 10. Hangzhou’s Pre-reform Population Changes, 1949–1978 (Note: Hangzhou had multiple municipal administrative boundary adjustments between 1952 and 1978. The population statistics are calculated based on the adjusted boundaries). Source: Propaganda Division of Hangzhou Communist Party (1999), Hangzhou Research Team (2008), and Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
urban population growth, Hangzhou utilized four strategies to control its urban population from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s: (1) all households or individuals intended to move into the city must secure approvals from the Hangzhou Population Management Office to obtain urban resident registration status; (2) the Hangzhou Population Management Authority made annual population increase forecast and distributed quotas to different industrial sectors; (3) the Municipality strictly controlled the
move-in or new establishment of state-owned work units (danwei) who must secure permits from either the provincial or the state level; (4) all individuals and households that were assigned new positions outside the city must leave Hangzhou immediately (Fang, 2002; Hangzhou Research Team, 2008). Several reasons have contributed to Hangzhou’s phenomenal population growth since the 1990s. First, the relaxation of household registration system and housing commodification have
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loosened employment controls and granted migrants more options and resources. Urban and rural residents are now allowed to seek employment and settle down as they wish without much statutory location restriction. Second, the economic boom in the national development zones, the Qianjiang New City, and the three newly annexed districts has generated increasing employment opportunities for migrants. Third, the fact that Hangzhou remains the provincial commercial and trading center with a prosperous tertiary sector seems promising to outsiders (Wei, 2005). Fourth, the administrative annexation and suburbanization has provided sufficient space for suburban housing development to accommodate a growing urban population. Industrial and residential suburbanization and polycentric urban planning have reconfigured the city’s population spatial distribution. Hangzhou’s urban core lost 11.6% of its population while suburban areas gained 54.5% of its population between 2000 and 2010 (Liu, Yue, Fan, & Song, 2015). (Fig. 11).
6. Land use restructuring Until the 1980s, Hangzhou experienced moderate urban expansion, accompanied by rather stagnant urban growth. In the mid-1990s, China’s ‘city leading county’ administrative hierarchical system allowed Hangzhou to annex seven towns in the neighboring Xiaoshan and Yuhang counties. Meanwhile, Hangzhou established four national development zones. In 2001 and then 2014, Hangzhou annexed Xiaoshan, Yuhang and Fuyang counties, which increased the main city’s land area from 683 square kilometers to 4876 square kilometers. This expansive urban growth strategy reconfigures Hangzhou’s landscape and restructures economic sectors. The strategy has certainly been conditioned by a series of land policies and macroeconomic situations. For instance, land transactions dropped in 2004 as a result of the stringent national land use policy for land transactions and then again in 2008 because of the economic recession. Hangzhou experienced its first significant suburbanization between the 1980s and the 1990s, when the urban core experienced population decline caused by the out-migration of residents to suburbs (Feng & Zhou, 2005). In the 1990s and the early 2000s,
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Hangzhou’s inner city redevelopment relocated large amount of enterprises and industries to suburbs. But many of these industrial and manufacturing relocations were not spatially well organized. It resulted in patchwork distribution of relocated industries and triggered another round of relocations in the 2000s. A study of Hangzhou’s early suburbanization finds that the share of residential, industrial, and transportation land uses increased, while that of educational and green space land uses decreased (Feng, 2003). Facilitated by two subway lines completed in 2012, Hangzhou’s most recent urban restructuring and suburbanization further supports dispersed urban form with massive physical expansion toward the east, the north, and the northwest; and property boom on the south shore of the Qiantang River has gained momentum (Qian, 2012). Yue, Liu, and Fan’s (2010) and Feng and Zhou’s (2005) studies show that Hangzhou’s dispersed urban patches have gradually agglomerated into larger urban areas along major road corridors but the planned multi-nuclei metropolitan pattern hasn’t engendered any competitive challenger to the old urban core and is still in its early stage featuring lower population density, lower property prices, and limited services in newly developed suburban centers.
7. Housing provisions Hangzhou’s housing provision reform did not start until 1993 when the municipal government privatized state-owned welfare housing at their cost rates through encouraging sitting tenants to purchase their apartments and obtain homeownership. The average per square meter rate rose moderately from 702 yuan in 1994 to 860 yuan in 1998 and was affordable to many sitting renters. By 1998, approximately 78.5% of state-owned welfare housing stock had been privatized, generating total revenue of 3 billion yuan for the city (Yang, 2010). This first phase of housing provision reform failed to completely terminate administrative allocation and various employer-provided housing subsidies were available. In July 1998, the State Council’s Notice on Furthering City and Town Housing Reform and Speeding Up Housing Development articulated that administrative allocation should soon be ceased and replaced by market-oriented provisions. The city established a
Fig. 11. Hangzhou’s Post-reform Population Changes, 1990–2013 (Note: Hangzhou had municipal administrative boundary adjustments in 1996 and then in 2001). Source: Propaganda Division of Hangzhou Communist Party (1999), Hangzhou Research Team (2008), and Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
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triple-pillar housing structure – commodity housing for the up-end income, economic comfortable housing for the moderate- and middle-income, and public low-price rental housing for the lowest income. During the first few years of its implementation, economic comfortable housing seemed unappealing to urban residents because the price of 2000 yuan per square meter was far beyond the affordability of the majority who earned a monthly average of 300–400 yuan at the time. Moreover, the (per square meter) unit price difference between economic comfortable housing and commodity housing was only about 400–500 yuan. However, Hangzhou’s soaring housing price soon changed the situation. In 2003, the average unit price of commodity housing was 7000 yuan, while the average of economic comfortable housing was 2900 yuan. This pressed the municipal housing administration to narrow the economic comfortable housing program scope to benefit only those whose annual household income was below 60% of the city’s disposable household income average (Yang, 2010). State-owned welfare housing privatization eventually shares only a small portion of housing provision in the market. With housing development as one of Hangzhou’s pillar industries, the local authorities strongly encourage commodity-housing purchase through tax incentives, subsidies, low-percentage down payment, and accessible mortgage programs (Fig. 12). 7.1. Public housing programs Hangzhou has been known for its high housing price, which often among the top of the highest housing price ranking for Chinese cities. The average commodity-housing price rocketed from 3278 yuan per square meter in 1998 to 13,447 yuan per square meter, with an even higher average new commodity-housing rate over 26,000 yuan per square meter in 2012 (Huang & Du, 2015; Yang, 2010). The average apartment size reached 84.6 square meters (Bureau of Hangzhou Real Estate Management, 2006), and more recently, Hangzhou’s urban residence per capita floor area is 35 square meters and its rural counterpart is 72 square meters (Hangzhou Statistical Bureau, 2014). In 2009 Hangzhou’s housing price to income ratio was 12, the fourth highest in China and far exceeded the international housing affordability threshold. The recent housing unit price average is ten times higher than the unit average ten years ago in the main city, but the urban resident disposable income only registers an 11.07% increase over the same period (Yang, 2010).
The Hangzhou Municipal Government recently diversifies its public housing provisions through establishing several affordable housing sub-sectors for households with different socioeconomic statuses: cheap rental housing, public rental housing, monetary subsidized housing and economic comfortable housing. The city didn’t initiate public housing program until 1999 and aims to build 131 thousand units and 13.9 million square meters of public housing by the end of 2015 (Huang & Du, 2015). Cheap rental housing provides apartments to lowest-income urban households; public rental housing is primarily for new graduates, migrants, and young professionals who are not eligible for cheap rental housing or economic comfortable housing and cannot afford to purchase commodity housing units; economic comfortable housing takes care of moderate- and middle-income urban households; and monetary subsidized housing helps lowest-income urban households. A large portion of cheap rental and monetary subsidized apartments accommodate the unemployed. By 2013, through a housing lottery mechanism for eligible households, Hangzhou provided 1.7% of its urban households with cheap rental and monetary subsidized apartments, 1.6% of its urban households public rental apartments, and 10.6% of its urban households economic comfortable apartments (Huang & Du, 2015), which is far below the original ambitious goal of meeting about 80% of housing needs in the city (Yang, 2010). Many economic comfortable apartment owners simply want to secure this housing welfare while they can actually afford to purchase commodity housing in the market. Their attitude leads to economic comfortable housing vacancy. The remote locations of public housing projects generate workplace-residence spatial mismatch and exacerbate traffic congestion problem. There have been expressed concerns about potential urban poverty concentration in cheap rental and monetary subsidized housing projects (Qian, 2012). Hangzhou’s suburbs accommodate about two million migrants, who live in an average of nine square meters. About 43% of them live in makeshifts or temporary residences (Yang, 2010). Spatial concentration and unstable socioeconomic situations of these migrants challenge current public housing policies and the local authorities often resort to ad hoc illegal residence demolition. 7.2. Housing density spatial restructuring Wen, Bu, and Qin (2014) postulate a triple-centered housing price spatial structure, in which the West Lake takes a leading role
Fig. 12. Hangzhou’s Floor Space Construction, 1990–2013. Source: Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
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in establishing high-end housing prices ascribed to its price elasticity and its stronger influence on housing market than the other two price centers – the Wulin Square, which is the old urban core, and the Qianjiang New City (Fig. 13). This trend will likely continue because Hangzhou decides to expand the West Lake resort area towards the west through the ‘Tourism at West’ and ‘West Lake Westward Expansion’ programs. The triple-centered spatial structure shows that Hangzhou moves towards a polycentric housing price structure even though the city’s population density spatial distribution has not clearly indicated a multi-nuclei pattern yet (Qian, 2012). Hangzhou had a relatively compact residential pattern before 2000 when new housing stocks had primarily been provided through inner city redevelopment. Following urban expansion and economic spatial restructuring, large-scale residential suburbanization became evident since the turn of the century. Concomitantly, Hangzhou’s housing market demonstrates a declining dependence on the city center and rising demands for quality infrastructure and public facilities in newly developed suburban residential areas (Zhang & Hui, 2013). Supported by local policies, large-scale suburban residential development with a relatively low floor area ratio has formed a fragmented and dispersed suburban pattern (Liu et al., 2015). The average housing price increased more than threefold in suburban area in the past decade (Wei, 2012). It is worthy to highlight that educational facilities in Hangzhou demonstrate a strongly positive capitalization effect in housing price and become one of the most important factors in suburban housing pricing. In recent years, Hangzhou’s ‘educational real estate’, for which housing projects are developed nearby quality elementary, secondary or higher education institutions, gives rise to a booming ‘school district apartment’ housing submarket. Many apartment
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purchasers prefer ‘school district apartments’ for their own uses or simply as investment (Wen, Zhang, & Zhang, 2014).
8. Future developments Hangzhou’s urban development has become an increasingly political-bound realm. Newly elected administrative leadership influences, and occasionally interrupts, the materialization of programs, mega projects and initiatives proposed by their precedents, while they propose their owns. Since 1992, despite its six mayors, Hangzhou has been led by only three General Secretaries of the Municipal Communist Party Committee. This steady local paramount leadership helps to ensure the continuities of many policies and initiatives, especially their implementations. Certainly, policy implementations in all aspects of current urban economy, master plan, demographic management, land uses, and housing programs have to overcome the challenges from the joint force of the rescaled state apparatus, government officials’ political, bureaucratic, and personal interests, the growing market power, as well as enhanced private property rights. Hangzhou exemplifies a dual-track urbanization process in which the mixture of the government-oriented and the bottom-up urbanization has transformed the city’s metropolitan form and defined its current economic circumstance and spatial structure. In recent years, Hangzhou strives to address critical issues in land uses and housing provisions by gradually allowing non-state sectors to assume an increasingly important role. For instance, the city diversifies its land acquisition compensation schemes to include monetary compensation, employment alternatives, share-holding co-operative, social security assurance, and rural
Fig. 13. The core of the Qianjiang New City features a Grand Opera Theater (right), a Civic Center Complex (center), and an International Conference and Exhibition Hall (left), connected by spacious multi-level open areas. Source: by the author.
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collective retained land, aiming to provide sustainable means to land-lost villagers through involving various non-state interests (Qian, 2015). The local authorities strongly encourage non-state sectors to provide public rental housing to non-local professionals and migrants through investment by either non-state enterprises or rural collectives in urban fringe. This initiative has been combined with the land policy for urban village rehabilitation in which rural collectives construct public rental housing projects in part of their 10% rural collective retained land after land acquisition. Hangzhou illustrates neoliberal urban growth strategy and policy rhetoric. It effectively capitalizes on the traditional West Lake-centered tourism industry and has recently been enhanced by urban economy diversification. Local authorities form pro-growth coalitions with non-state interests in developing this prosperous metropolis and establish a strong entrepreneurial attitude toward its economic and urban growth agenda. There have been closely intertwined relations amongst the city’s heritage and tourism, emerging and restructured industries, economic development priorities, non-state interests, changing societal core values, and even gradually empowered civil society in urban affairs. The Hangzhou Municipal Government repeatedly stresses energy saving, pollution emission controls, research and development, inflation controls, unemployment and poverty reduction in its urban prospect. All these will continue to configure the fast-growing Hangzhou’s spatiotemporal urban patterns and dramatic socioeconomic changes in the future. References Barmé, G. R. (2015). A chronology of West Lake and Hangzhou. Accessed 27.04.15. Bureau of Hangzhou Real Estate Management (2006). Survey of Hangzhou urban housing condition [in Chinese]. Fang, L. (Eds.) (2002). Hangzhou urban and rural construction Almanac. Zhonghua Shuju Chubanshe [in Chinese]. Feng, J. (2003). Evolution of Hangzhou’s urban form and land use structure. Acta Geographical Sinica, 58(3), 343–353. Feng, J., & Zhou, Y. (2005). Suburbanization and the changes of urban internal spatial structure in Hangzhou, China. Urban Geography, 26(2), 107–136. Fu, C. (1985). China’s Grand Canal city development history. Chengdu: Sichuan Remin Chuban She [in Chinese].
Hangzhou Municipal Government (2002). Marching toward the Qiantang River Era: Hangzhou urban strategic plan. Shanghai: Tongji University Press [in Chinese]. Hangzhou Municipal Government (2007). Master plan for Hangzhou City (2001– 2020) [in Chinese]. Hangzhou Research Team (2008). Collection of contemporary Chinese city development: Hangzhou. Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo Chubanshe [in Chinese]. Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014). Hangzhou statistical yearbook 2014. Beijing: Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe [in Chinese]. Huang, Z., & Du, X. (2015). Assessment and determinants of residential satisfaction with public housing in Hangzhou, China. Habitat International, 47, 218–230. Liu, Y., Yue, W., Fan, P., & Song, Y. (2015). Suburban residential development in the era of market-oriented land reform: The case of Hangzhou, China. Land Use Policy, 42, 233–243. Propaganda Division of Hangzhou Communist Party (1999). Hangzhou 1949–1999. Hangzhou: Hangzhou Chubanshe [in Chinese]. Qian, Z. (2011). Building Hangzhou’s new city center: Mega project development and entrepreneurial urban governance in China. Asian Geographer, 28(1), 3–19. Qian, Z. (2012). Post-reform urban restructuring in China: The case of Hangzhou 1990–2010. Town Planning Review, 83(4), 431–456. Qian, Z. (2015). Land acquisition compensation in post-reform China: Evolution, structure and challenges in Hangzhou. Land Use Policy, 46, 250–257. Sheng, J., & Lo, A. (2010). Evaluating the tourism potential of public museums in Hangzhou: A supply-side perspective. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 27, 287–305. Wang, L. (1999). Tourism and spatial change in Hangzhou, 1911–1927. In J. W. Esherick (Ed.), Remaking the Chinese city: Modernity and national identity, 1900– 1950 (pp. 107–120). Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Wei, Y. H. D. (2005). Planning Chinese cities: The limits of transitional institutions. Urban Geography, 26(3), 200–221. Wei, Y. H. D. (2012). Restructuring for growth in urban China: Transitional institutions, urban development, and spatial transformation. Habitat International, 36, 396–405. Wen, H., Bu, X., & Qin, Z. (2014). Spatial effect of lake landscape on housing price: A case study of the West Lake in Hangzhou, China. Habitat International, 44, 31–40. Wen, H., Zhang, Y., & Zhang, L. (2014). Do educational facilities affect housing price? An empirical study in Hangzhou, China. Habitat International, 42, 155–163. Wu, K., & Zhang, H. (2012). Land use dynamics, built-up land expansion patterns, and driving forces analysis of the fast-growing Hangzhou metropolitan area, eastern China (1978–2008). Applied Geography, 34, 137–145. Yang, J. (Ed.). (2010). Housing security. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Renmin Chubanshe [in Chinese]. Yue, W., Liu, Y., & Fan, P. (2010). Polycentric urban development: The case of Hangzhou. Environment and Planning A, 42, 563–577. Zhang, L., & Hui, E. C. M. (2013). Structural change in housing submarkets in burgeoning real estate market: A case study of Hangzhou, China. Habitat International, 39, 214–223. Zou, S., Liu, W., & Zou, X. (2007). Hangzhou urban development history. Beijing: Xinhua Chubanshe [in Chinese].
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities
City profile
Hangzhou Zhu Qian School of Planning, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo N2L 3G1, Canada
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 28 April 2015 Received in revised form 1 June 2015 Accepted 1 June 2015
Keywords: Hangzhou Urban forms Urban development Population Housing Land use
a b s t r a c t Once an ancient capital of China, Hangzhou has transformed to a post-socialist city that faces profound changes and critical challenges in various aspects of urban development such as historical legacies, market-oriented urban economy, expansive urban spatial patterns, population management, land use restructuring, and affordable housing provision. Under the increasingly stronger market power, the city strives to reposition itself to be an important economic center in the Yangtze River Delta Region, through strategic and innovative urban growth agenda. This profile identifies some fundamental issues and processes that underscore Hangzhou’s recent urban development and presents future prospect for a coastal metropolis with regional significance. Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, is located at the southern wing of the Yangtze River Delta, the west of Hangzhou Bay, and the lower reaches of the Qiantang River. About 180 km from the ‘dragon head’ Shanghai, Hangzhou is the second largest metropolis in the Yangtze River Delta Region (Fig. 1). Named ‘the Land of Fish and Rice’ and ‘the Paradise on the Earth’ by scholars and writers, the city is well known for its picturesque natural landscape and environment – 65.6% of its land area is hilly and mountainous (with an elevation range between 200 and 1100 meters) distributed in the west, middle and south, and 26.4% of its land area plain (with a surface elevation range between 2 and 10 m) in its northeast, leaving 8% of the area water bodies. Hangzhou is the origin city of the world’s longest artificial canal – the Grand Canal (Hangzhou Municipal Government, 2007). The city’s northern subtropical monsoon climate creates four distinct seasons with a mild winter and a ‘hotpot’ feeling summer. Hangzhou’s main city (city proper) has nine urban administrative districts – Shangcheng, Xiacheng, Binjiang, Jianggan, Gongshu, Xihu, Xiaoshan, Yuhang and Fuyang. They constitute the core of the Hangzhou Metropolitan Area that also includes two counties (Tonglu and Chun’an) and two country-level cities (Jiande and Lin’an). In 2013, urban resident annual per capita disposable income is 39,310 yuan; and rural resident annual per capita net income is 18,923 yuan in Hangzhou Metropolitan Area (Hangzhou Statistical Bureau, 2014).
E-mail address: [email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.06.004 0264-2751/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A city profile of Hangzhou is desirable for several reasons. First, the city has a long history of five thousand years and is one of China’s Seven Ancient Capitals. Many of the city’s cultural landscape and historic relics can still been appreciated. Second, Hangzhou is a transitional city known for its prosperous non-state economy, especially Town and Village Enterprises and domestic private industries. Third, the city is a representative coastal metropolis that has experienced almost all significant challenges in local economy since the economic reform. Typical urban strategies such as development zones, administrative annexation, and new CBD have transformed the city. Meanwhile, the post-reform inter-city competition requires Hangzhou to reposition its urban economy and restructure its urban space. Fourth, Hangzhou has been one of the pilot cities for policy initiatives such as land banking, land acquisition compensation, and economic comfortable housing. This profile starts with Hangzhou’s history in relation to the current city, and then delineates its urban economy, urban form evolution and master plans, urban population, followed by its recent land use restructuring. The later part of the profile involves a relatively detailed discussion about Hangzhou’s housing provision with specific reference to its public housing programs and housing density spatial restructuring. The profile concludes with discussion on future developments of the city. 2. History and present A county government seat in the Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC) and then the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279),
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Fig. 1. Location of Hangzhou in the Yangtze River Delta Region and China. Source: by the author.
Hangzhou’s origin can be dated back to the Neolithic period more than five thousand years ago, marked by the well-documented Hemudu culture. The city’s historic urban evolution has been defined, driven, and constrained by three major waters: the West Lake, the Qiantang River, and the Grand Canal (Fu, 1985). The urban economy of Hangzhou, the northbound origin of the Grand Canal leading to the north end in Beijing, was closely knitted with rich water meshes in the region. The West Lake and its neighboring mountains anchored the city’s internal structure formation and became the urban physical essentials in early urban development in the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing (1644–1912) Dynasties. Important urban components such as city walls and gates, bridges, administrative agencies, religious structures, and attractions were more or less connected to the West Lake and its mountainous milieu, because Chinese geomancy believed that the West Lake
and its surroundings offered the city vigor. As early as in the Five Dynasties (907–960), enhanced dykes harnessed strong tides of the Qiantang River and made the River a contributor rather than a threat to Hangzhou’s wellbeing. During the Ming and the Qing, Hangzhou rose to be a regional commercial and trading hub and the city’s quality silk, tea, and handicrafts attracted merchants from afar; the Renhe County Gazette records that half of the Hangzhou people was in business or trading (Fu, 1985; Wang, 1999). In the late Ming, a Hangzhou-based business tycoon had a fleet of a hundred ships exporting local products to Japan, Luzon, and Indochina coasts. The economic success led to regional growth – the number of towns in the great Hangzhou region doubled. However, since the mid-19th century Hangzhou’s regional importance has been eclipsed by the rise of Shanghai that was originally opened as a treaty port. The rich history and unique geographical
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situation make Hangzhou well known for its beautiful natural landscape, historic cultural legacies, traditional urban landmarks, and small handicrafts. Today, Hangzhou is a representative of coastal metropolises and an integral part of the emerging global economic powerhouse headed by Shanghai. The Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration includes 14 cities among which Hangzhou is one of the three anchors along with Nanjing and Shanghai. As of 2013, Hangzhou’s per capita GDP exceeds USD $19,000. While its primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors have a respective share of 3.2%, 43.9%, and 52.9% in terms of industrial production, the city has 10.8% of its employment population in the primary sector, 44.8% in the secondary sector, and 44.4% in the tertiary sector. The Hangzhou Metropolitan Area covers 16,596 square kilometers with a population of 8.84 million, generating a population density of 533 persons per square kilometer. The main city covers 4876 square kilometers with a total of 7.08 million residents. The main city sustains a population density of 1453 persons per square kilometer, with much higher density registered in two oldest urban districts Shangcheng and Xiacheng – 19,517 and 17,142 persons per square kilometer respectively (Hangzhou Statistical Bureau, 2014). The most recent two national censuses show that Hangzhou’s urbanization rate increased from 58.6% in 2000 to 70.0% in 2010.
3. Urban economy Hangzhou’s shadow economic location in the Yangtze River Delta Region relative to strong competitors such as Shanghai, Suzhou, and Ningbo requires innovative and strategic economic policies to attract and sustain various types of investments in fierce inter-city competitions. Since the economic reform, Hangzhou’s urban economy has witnessed three different phases. The first phase is a resource- and labor-intensive period between 1978 and 1992 when urban industries were still marked by the planned economy legacy that often hindered economic restructuring. The second phase is a capital- and technology-intensive incipient period between 1993 and 2003 when market-oriented state-owned and collective enterprise reforms and property rights reform accelerated the rise of non-state enterprises which gave strong impetus to local economic growth. The most recent phase since 2004 is a period that highlights capital-, technology-, and knowledge-intensive industries. Hangzhou’s recent economic restructuring identifies cultural and creative industry, tourism and leisure, financial services, e-commerce, information technology, advanced equipment industry, biomedicine, and sustainable energy as its major industries for future development. Booming non-state-owned industries play an increasingly critical role in radically transforming local economy. In the so-called rural urbanization, the Hangzhou Metropolitan Area’s Town and Village Enterprise (TVE) output started with a mere US $9.7 million or 0.48% of the total local industrial output in 1978, but the output of (reformed) TVEs jumped to US $98,588 million or 82.64% of the total local industrial output in 2008. TVEs hire 62.45% of the total workers in the Hangzhou Metropolitan Area (Wu & Zhang, 2012). Domestic private enterprises such as Wahaha, a food and beverage company, and more recently, Alibaba, an e-commerce company, have produced some of the most successful business tycoons in China. Hangzhou’s ability to secure tremendously large amount of land through annexations since the 1990s demonstrates a critical power and constitutional rights of its local authorities. Among four national development zones in the main city, Hangzhou High Technological Development Zone accommodates knowledge- and technology-intensive industries; Hangzhou Economic and
Technological Development Zone hosts pharmaceutical, chemical, machinery and electronics, textiles, as well as export processing industries; Xiaoshan Economic and Technological Development Zone is home to automobile, construction materials, export processing, and light industries; and Zhijiang Tourism and Holiday Development Zone develops theme parks, holiday resorts, museums and recreation facilities. Hangzhou’s most recent mega project is its new CBD – the Qianjiang New City along the northwest shore of the Qiantang River. After more than ten year’s development, the Qianjiang New City is becoming a receiver of many important financial, commercial, institutional, civic, entertainment functions of the city (Qian, 2011). Local authorities have particularly put efforts in financial incentives, infrastructure development, investment environments, and welcoming attitudes towards preferential investors, aiming to further improve the reputation and market potential of the city. Tourism has long been one of Hangzhou’s competitive advantages in economic growth. Because of its rich cultural landscape and historical relics, Hangzhou’s West Lake has always been at the center of the prosperous heritage and tourism industry. Municipal organizations such as the West Lake Scenic District Management Committee and the Hangzhou Tourism Committee exercise their power and responsibilities to protect and promote the West Lake resort area that comprises numerous temples, pagodas, pavilions, gardens, as well as causeways and artificial islands. In 2001, the Hangzhou Municipal Government approved the ‘West Lake Westward Expansion’ Plan (Xihu Xijin), aiming to create a West Lake scenic zone that is ‘busy in the East; lively in the South; tranquil in the West; refined in the North and stunning in the Centre’. The West Lake South Periphery Integration Project was launched first, covering an area of over 50 ha and sharing some 27% of the road surface area around the Lake (Barmé, 2015). The project connects the disparate major parks along the eastern and southern shores of the Lake and creates a five-kilometer long ‘Lake Scenic Belt’, echoing an old saying that the West Lake is ‘misty hills on three sides with a city on the fourth’. The recently completed Master Yang Causeway project increases the expanse of the Lake by one sixth, to 6.4 square kilometers. Another recently unveiled ‘West Lake World’ project (Xihu Tiandi) converted a previously walled compound occupied by party-state officials into a trendy dining and entertainment district on the eastern shore of the West Lake. This commercial success reuses many of the large private homes as restaurants and cafes. Featuring more than 100 scenic spots, over 20 museums and memorials in eleven different scenic regions, the West Lake scenic area has been listed in the World Heritage Sites since 2011 (Fig. 2). Hangzhou’s attractions cover a wide range of interests such as early Chinese civilization, Chinese ancient ceramics, Chinese tea culture and history, traditional Chinese medicine, the West Lake and its surrounding amenities, the Grand Canal culture, architectural arts, traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, as well as silk culture and history (Figs. 3 and 4). Hangzhou revamps its traditional tourism business and wisely capitalizes on its tourism economy in recent years. The tourism industry experienced tremendous boom between 1995 and 2013 (Figs. 5 and 6). In 2013, the city attracted 97.25 million international and domestic visitors, a 4.5-time increase since 1995. The tourism industry revenue reached 160.4 billion yuan in 2013, a stunning increase from 10.6 billion yuan in 1995. Tourism serves as a catalyst for other economic sectors especially tertiary sectors in the city. However, Hangzhou’s tourism development needs to address strategic and practical issues in the future. For instance, some museums could play more contributive role in local tourism. Research contends that their poor accessibility, isolated locations from major attractions, insufficient complementarity with peripheral attractions, and limited carrying capacity are the primary limitations
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Fig. 2. Covering an area of 1150 ha, Xixi National Wetland Park features various ponds, lakes and swamps and becomes home to many birds, aquatic animals, and vegetation. Source: by the author.
Fig. 3. Southern Song Imperial Street District, once only accessible to the Emperor and his entourage, becomes a historic commercial district popular among visitors and locals. Source: by the author.
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Fig. 4. Historic commercial and neighborhood strips along both sides of the Grand Canal are part of Hangzhou’s Grand Canal Culture promotion. Source: by the author.
Fig. 5. Hangzhou’s tourism industry revenue between 1995 and 2013. Source: Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
(Sheng & Lo, 2010). The local authorities could develop proactive tourism plans and incorporate innovative marketing strategies. Since the majority of Hangzhou’s attractions are publicly owned, more considerations should be given to how public resources in local tourism can be utilized in a more effective way. Attractions with local, regional, or international cultural, social, economic, or heritage significance could be better marketed and more conveniently connected to different types of tourists.
4. Urban forms and master plans Hangzhou’s spatial form evolution includes several periods. The spatial pattern between the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) and the Liberation in 1949 was fairly stable when the three major waters and a city moat defined the city. From 1949 to the early 1960s, the city grew along three axes of the Grand Canal, the West Lake and the Qiantang River. The socialist industrialization after the late
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Fig. 6. Numbers of visitors to Hangzhou between 1995 and 2013. Source: Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
1950s helped to form a hand-shaped pattern and by the mid-1980s, Hangzhou had a palm-shaped built-up area with the development along main traffic corridors and the north shore of the Qiantang River resembling five fingers. The areas between the ‘fingers’ were quickly filled up during large-scale urban development in the late 1980s and the 1990s, morphing into a fanlike urban form. Since the 1990s, Hangzhou has had ambitious annexation of three large neighboring counties. Binjiang District, part of the former Xiaoshan County, was established through annexation in December 1996. Then Xiaoshan and Yuhang counties were annexed and became urban administrative districts in March 2001. In December 2014, Fuyang was annexed and become Hangzhou’s newest urban district. The annexations extended Hangzhou’s urban areas across the Qiantang River, resulting in a gigantic butterfly shape (Fig. 7). Following the urban expansive strategy of ‘crossing the Qiantang River and developing southward’ (Kuajiang Fazhan) proposed by the Hangzhou Municipal Government in the late 1990s, the rapid development along the Qiantang River drove the eastward and southward expansion of built-up areas. From 1978 to 2008, Hangzhou’s built-up area expanded from 319 to 863 square kilometers. Since 1949, Hangzhou’s master plans have changed from its ideologically bound urban agenda for state socialism to a market-oriented one under current transitional economy. ‘A tourist city for sightseeing, recuperation, and culture, with reasonable light industry development’ was articulated in its 1953 mater plan for the First Five-Year Plan (1953–1957). This master plan followed the per capita land use quota standard set by the National Basic Construction Commission for the city’s planned population of 700 thousand in a total land area of 5030 ha. The entire urban area was simplistically divided into four zones: tourism zone, cultural and educational zone, industrial zone, as well as residential zone. An administrative center for provincial and municipal agencies was defined in the master plan. Warehouse and dockland zones were planned along railways and the Grand Canal. Then ‘a heavy industry-based comprehensive industrial city’ became the overarching goal in the city’s 1958 master plan to facilitate speedy urban industrialization during the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961). This master plan set up ten industrial zones: Banshan heavy industrial zone for metallurgy and machinery; Gongchenqiao light industrial
zone for textile and papermaking; Jianggan light industrial zone for timber processing and food industry; Xianlinbu mining industry zone; Shangsi construction material zone; Pingyao special industrial zone; Xiaoshan industrial zone; Huilongshan chemical engineering industrial zone; Fuyang industrial zone for papermaking and forestry; and the extant industries in the urban core. Some of Hangzhou’s current industrial areas were initially developed during that period. In its first post-reform master plan approved by the State Council in 1981 (Fig. 8), Hangzhou set its urban growth orientation to be ‘a provincial administrative seat, a listed Historic and Cultural Famous City, and a national major tourist city’. The 1981 master plan set 1985 as the year for achieving its short-term planning objectives and 2000 as the year for its long-term planning vision. This master plan imposed strict control of population growth in the main city through industrial suburbanization, economic cluster restructuring, satellite or sub-center town development, and strict migration policy. It prioritized tourism industry and encouraged rural individuals and collectives to build vernacular style structures that match their surrounding amenities, contributing to the tourism development. The 1981 master plan followed the tenet of ‘conserving the West Lake, developing areas along the Qiantang River, redeveloping the old city, improving public service facilities, restructuring urban industries, and erecting satellite towns’. The newly planned areas along the Qiantang River were for tourism, cultural and educational, science and research, and residential uses. The city’s master plan proposal (1996–2010) defined Hangzhou as ‘an international tourist city and national Historic and Cultural Famous City, a central city in the Yangtze River Delta Region, and the political, economic, scientific-educational, and cultural center of Zhejiang Province’. After the annexation of Xiaoshan and Yuhang counties, this proposal was revised upon the request from the State Council. Hangzhou’s most recent master plan (2001–2020) added to its 1996 proposal for its future development orientation to be a modern city that would, ‘further contribute to the Yangtze River Delta Region as one of the core cities led by Shanghai; continue to be the provincial political, economic, cultural, and educational center; and enhance the city’s scientific innovation and regional comprehensive services’
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Fig. 7. Hangzhou’s spatial form evolution. Source: Hangzhou Municipal Government (2002). Modified by the author.
(Hangzhou Municipal Government, 2007) (Fig. 9). This master plan sets 2050 for its long-term vision with detailed configurations specified for 2020. It aims to control urban land uses within 370 square kilometers and urban permanent population within 6.5 million in the city proper by 2020. Urban expansion along the Qiangtang River is emphasized again. Six suburban centers for polycentric growth and six ecological belts connecting suburban or exurban ecological, green, and agricultural areas are articulated in the mater plan. Ten historic and cultural districts and sixteen historic street blocks are designated for conservation. Over time, Hangzhou’s efforts in mitigating built environment challenges and beatifying urban amenities have been recognized by domestic and overseas organizations, earning titles such as the United Nations Habitat Award, China Habitat Environment Prize, International Garden City, and National Environment Protection Model City. In 2013, Hangzhou was ranked No. 1 in Forbes’ Best Commercial Cities in Mainland China and topped China’s Happiest Cities (by the Xinhua News Agency) for ten consecutive years. 5. Urban population During the entire pre-reform period between 1949 and 1978, there were both government-sanctioned rural-to-urban and urban-to-rural migrations following radical political movements
and ambitious economic agenda. The amount of migrants involved in these population movements was huge. At the beginning of the People’s Republic, the politico-economic principle of transforming Hangzhou from a consumption center into a production center meant that the city required a large labor force in productive industries, which was accompanied by a spontaneously returning urban population who had fled to rural areas during the wars. Hangzhou’s urban population increased from 473,800 in 1949 to 657,400 in 1957, which was a 38.75% growth (Zou, Liu, & Zou, 2007). The years between 1958 and 1960 witnessed fast ostensible urbanization because of a series of radical industrial restructuring toward a heavy industry dominated local economy. The influx of 270 thousand rural residents into the city resulted in an unprecedented 27.2% urban population increase during these three years. Moreover, the urban population statistics did not include seasonal hires from rural areas for urban industry ‘great leap forward’, whose temporary urban resident status was not counted in the census (Hangzhou Research Team, 2008). Between 1961 and 1963, and then in 1969, several rounds of ‘sending urban residents down to rural areas’ (Xiafang) were implemented. During the Third Five-Year Plan (1963–1967), peasant-turned-workers in the city were requested to return to their villages. Hangzhou’s urban population share dropped from 33.66% in 1959 to 22.95% in 1978. The urban population proportion did not revert to 33.6% until 1997, primarily due to the strict
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Fig. 8. Hangzhou’s 1981 Land Use Plan, the city’s first post-reform plan. Source: Hangzhou Municipal Planning Bureau Archive, digitized by the author.
implementation of the urban household registration system (Propaganda Division of Hangzhou Communist Party, 1999) (Fig. 10).
Just a few years after the economic reform, the reinstating of the ‘sent-down’ resident’s urban registration status increased the city’s urban population to 927 thousand in 1982. In response to rapid
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Fig. 9. Hangzhou Master Plan (2001–2020). Source: Hangzhou Municipal Planning Bureau, digitized and revised by the author.
Fig. 10. Hangzhou’s Pre-reform Population Changes, 1949–1978 (Note: Hangzhou had multiple municipal administrative boundary adjustments between 1952 and 1978. The population statistics are calculated based on the adjusted boundaries). Source: Propaganda Division of Hangzhou Communist Party (1999), Hangzhou Research Team (2008), and Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
urban population growth, Hangzhou utilized four strategies to control its urban population from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s: (1) all households or individuals intended to move into the city must secure approvals from the Hangzhou Population Management Office to obtain urban resident registration status; (2) the Hangzhou Population Management Authority made annual population increase forecast and distributed quotas to different industrial sectors; (3) the Municipality strictly controlled the
move-in or new establishment of state-owned work units (danwei) who must secure permits from either the provincial or the state level; (4) all individuals and households that were assigned new positions outside the city must leave Hangzhou immediately (Fang, 2002; Hangzhou Research Team, 2008). Several reasons have contributed to Hangzhou’s phenomenal population growth since the 1990s. First, the relaxation of household registration system and housing commodification have
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loosened employment controls and granted migrants more options and resources. Urban and rural residents are now allowed to seek employment and settle down as they wish without much statutory location restriction. Second, the economic boom in the national development zones, the Qianjiang New City, and the three newly annexed districts has generated increasing employment opportunities for migrants. Third, the fact that Hangzhou remains the provincial commercial and trading center with a prosperous tertiary sector seems promising to outsiders (Wei, 2005). Fourth, the administrative annexation and suburbanization has provided sufficient space for suburban housing development to accommodate a growing urban population. Industrial and residential suburbanization and polycentric urban planning have reconfigured the city’s population spatial distribution. Hangzhou’s urban core lost 11.6% of its population while suburban areas gained 54.5% of its population between 2000 and 2010 (Liu, Yue, Fan, & Song, 2015). (Fig. 11).
6. Land use restructuring Until the 1980s, Hangzhou experienced moderate urban expansion, accompanied by rather stagnant urban growth. In the mid-1990s, China’s ‘city leading county’ administrative hierarchical system allowed Hangzhou to annex seven towns in the neighboring Xiaoshan and Yuhang counties. Meanwhile, Hangzhou established four national development zones. In 2001 and then 2014, Hangzhou annexed Xiaoshan, Yuhang and Fuyang counties, which increased the main city’s land area from 683 square kilometers to 4876 square kilometers. This expansive urban growth strategy reconfigures Hangzhou’s landscape and restructures economic sectors. The strategy has certainly been conditioned by a series of land policies and macroeconomic situations. For instance, land transactions dropped in 2004 as a result of the stringent national land use policy for land transactions and then again in 2008 because of the economic recession. Hangzhou experienced its first significant suburbanization between the 1980s and the 1990s, when the urban core experienced population decline caused by the out-migration of residents to suburbs (Feng & Zhou, 2005). In the 1990s and the early 2000s,
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Hangzhou’s inner city redevelopment relocated large amount of enterprises and industries to suburbs. But many of these industrial and manufacturing relocations were not spatially well organized. It resulted in patchwork distribution of relocated industries and triggered another round of relocations in the 2000s. A study of Hangzhou’s early suburbanization finds that the share of residential, industrial, and transportation land uses increased, while that of educational and green space land uses decreased (Feng, 2003). Facilitated by two subway lines completed in 2012, Hangzhou’s most recent urban restructuring and suburbanization further supports dispersed urban form with massive physical expansion toward the east, the north, and the northwest; and property boom on the south shore of the Qiantang River has gained momentum (Qian, 2012). Yue, Liu, and Fan’s (2010) and Feng and Zhou’s (2005) studies show that Hangzhou’s dispersed urban patches have gradually agglomerated into larger urban areas along major road corridors but the planned multi-nuclei metropolitan pattern hasn’t engendered any competitive challenger to the old urban core and is still in its early stage featuring lower population density, lower property prices, and limited services in newly developed suburban centers.
7. Housing provisions Hangzhou’s housing provision reform did not start until 1993 when the municipal government privatized state-owned welfare housing at their cost rates through encouraging sitting tenants to purchase their apartments and obtain homeownership. The average per square meter rate rose moderately from 702 yuan in 1994 to 860 yuan in 1998 and was affordable to many sitting renters. By 1998, approximately 78.5% of state-owned welfare housing stock had been privatized, generating total revenue of 3 billion yuan for the city (Yang, 2010). This first phase of housing provision reform failed to completely terminate administrative allocation and various employer-provided housing subsidies were available. In July 1998, the State Council’s Notice on Furthering City and Town Housing Reform and Speeding Up Housing Development articulated that administrative allocation should soon be ceased and replaced by market-oriented provisions. The city established a
Fig. 11. Hangzhou’s Post-reform Population Changes, 1990–2013 (Note: Hangzhou had municipal administrative boundary adjustments in 1996 and then in 2001). Source: Propaganda Division of Hangzhou Communist Party (1999), Hangzhou Research Team (2008), and Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
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triple-pillar housing structure – commodity housing for the up-end income, economic comfortable housing for the moderate- and middle-income, and public low-price rental housing for the lowest income. During the first few years of its implementation, economic comfortable housing seemed unappealing to urban residents because the price of 2000 yuan per square meter was far beyond the affordability of the majority who earned a monthly average of 300–400 yuan at the time. Moreover, the (per square meter) unit price difference between economic comfortable housing and commodity housing was only about 400–500 yuan. However, Hangzhou’s soaring housing price soon changed the situation. In 2003, the average unit price of commodity housing was 7000 yuan, while the average of economic comfortable housing was 2900 yuan. This pressed the municipal housing administration to narrow the economic comfortable housing program scope to benefit only those whose annual household income was below 60% of the city’s disposable household income average (Yang, 2010). State-owned welfare housing privatization eventually shares only a small portion of housing provision in the market. With housing development as one of Hangzhou’s pillar industries, the local authorities strongly encourage commodity-housing purchase through tax incentives, subsidies, low-percentage down payment, and accessible mortgage programs (Fig. 12). 7.1. Public housing programs Hangzhou has been known for its high housing price, which often among the top of the highest housing price ranking for Chinese cities. The average commodity-housing price rocketed from 3278 yuan per square meter in 1998 to 13,447 yuan per square meter, with an even higher average new commodity-housing rate over 26,000 yuan per square meter in 2012 (Huang & Du, 2015; Yang, 2010). The average apartment size reached 84.6 square meters (Bureau of Hangzhou Real Estate Management, 2006), and more recently, Hangzhou’s urban residence per capita floor area is 35 square meters and its rural counterpart is 72 square meters (Hangzhou Statistical Bureau, 2014). In 2009 Hangzhou’s housing price to income ratio was 12, the fourth highest in China and far exceeded the international housing affordability threshold. The recent housing unit price average is ten times higher than the unit average ten years ago in the main city, but the urban resident disposable income only registers an 11.07% increase over the same period (Yang, 2010).
The Hangzhou Municipal Government recently diversifies its public housing provisions through establishing several affordable housing sub-sectors for households with different socioeconomic statuses: cheap rental housing, public rental housing, monetary subsidized housing and economic comfortable housing. The city didn’t initiate public housing program until 1999 and aims to build 131 thousand units and 13.9 million square meters of public housing by the end of 2015 (Huang & Du, 2015). Cheap rental housing provides apartments to lowest-income urban households; public rental housing is primarily for new graduates, migrants, and young professionals who are not eligible for cheap rental housing or economic comfortable housing and cannot afford to purchase commodity housing units; economic comfortable housing takes care of moderate- and middle-income urban households; and monetary subsidized housing helps lowest-income urban households. A large portion of cheap rental and monetary subsidized apartments accommodate the unemployed. By 2013, through a housing lottery mechanism for eligible households, Hangzhou provided 1.7% of its urban households with cheap rental and monetary subsidized apartments, 1.6% of its urban households public rental apartments, and 10.6% of its urban households economic comfortable apartments (Huang & Du, 2015), which is far below the original ambitious goal of meeting about 80% of housing needs in the city (Yang, 2010). Many economic comfortable apartment owners simply want to secure this housing welfare while they can actually afford to purchase commodity housing in the market. Their attitude leads to economic comfortable housing vacancy. The remote locations of public housing projects generate workplace-residence spatial mismatch and exacerbate traffic congestion problem. There have been expressed concerns about potential urban poverty concentration in cheap rental and monetary subsidized housing projects (Qian, 2012). Hangzhou’s suburbs accommodate about two million migrants, who live in an average of nine square meters. About 43% of them live in makeshifts or temporary residences (Yang, 2010). Spatial concentration and unstable socioeconomic situations of these migrants challenge current public housing policies and the local authorities often resort to ad hoc illegal residence demolition. 7.2. Housing density spatial restructuring Wen, Bu, and Qin (2014) postulate a triple-centered housing price spatial structure, in which the West Lake takes a leading role
Fig. 12. Hangzhou’s Floor Space Construction, 1990–2013. Source: Hangzhou Statistical Bureau (2014).
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in establishing high-end housing prices ascribed to its price elasticity and its stronger influence on housing market than the other two price centers – the Wulin Square, which is the old urban core, and the Qianjiang New City (Fig. 13). This trend will likely continue because Hangzhou decides to expand the West Lake resort area towards the west through the ‘Tourism at West’ and ‘West Lake Westward Expansion’ programs. The triple-centered spatial structure shows that Hangzhou moves towards a polycentric housing price structure even though the city’s population density spatial distribution has not clearly indicated a multi-nuclei pattern yet (Qian, 2012). Hangzhou had a relatively compact residential pattern before 2000 when new housing stocks had primarily been provided through inner city redevelopment. Following urban expansion and economic spatial restructuring, large-scale residential suburbanization became evident since the turn of the century. Concomitantly, Hangzhou’s housing market demonstrates a declining dependence on the city center and rising demands for quality infrastructure and public facilities in newly developed suburban residential areas (Zhang & Hui, 2013). Supported by local policies, large-scale suburban residential development with a relatively low floor area ratio has formed a fragmented and dispersed suburban pattern (Liu et al., 2015). The average housing price increased more than threefold in suburban area in the past decade (Wei, 2012). It is worthy to highlight that educational facilities in Hangzhou demonstrate a strongly positive capitalization effect in housing price and become one of the most important factors in suburban housing pricing. In recent years, Hangzhou’s ‘educational real estate’, for which housing projects are developed nearby quality elementary, secondary or higher education institutions, gives rise to a booming ‘school district apartment’ housing submarket. Many apartment
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purchasers prefer ‘school district apartments’ for their own uses or simply as investment (Wen, Zhang, & Zhang, 2014).
8. Future developments Hangzhou’s urban development has become an increasingly political-bound realm. Newly elected administrative leadership influences, and occasionally interrupts, the materialization of programs, mega projects and initiatives proposed by their precedents, while they propose their owns. Since 1992, despite its six mayors, Hangzhou has been led by only three General Secretaries of the Municipal Communist Party Committee. This steady local paramount leadership helps to ensure the continuities of many policies and initiatives, especially their implementations. Certainly, policy implementations in all aspects of current urban economy, master plan, demographic management, land uses, and housing programs have to overcome the challenges from the joint force of the rescaled state apparatus, government officials’ political, bureaucratic, and personal interests, the growing market power, as well as enhanced private property rights. Hangzhou exemplifies a dual-track urbanization process in which the mixture of the government-oriented and the bottom-up urbanization has transformed the city’s metropolitan form and defined its current economic circumstance and spatial structure. In recent years, Hangzhou strives to address critical issues in land uses and housing provisions by gradually allowing non-state sectors to assume an increasingly important role. For instance, the city diversifies its land acquisition compensation schemes to include monetary compensation, employment alternatives, share-holding co-operative, social security assurance, and rural
Fig. 13. The core of the Qianjiang New City features a Grand Opera Theater (right), a Civic Center Complex (center), and an International Conference and Exhibition Hall (left), connected by spacious multi-level open areas. Source: by the author.
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collective retained land, aiming to provide sustainable means to land-lost villagers through involving various non-state interests (Qian, 2015). The local authorities strongly encourage non-state sectors to provide public rental housing to non-local professionals and migrants through investment by either non-state enterprises or rural collectives in urban fringe. This initiative has been combined with the land policy for urban village rehabilitation in which rural collectives construct public rental housing projects in part of their 10% rural collective retained land after land acquisition. Hangzhou illustrates neoliberal urban growth strategy and policy rhetoric. It effectively capitalizes on the traditional West Lake-centered tourism industry and has recently been enhanced by urban economy diversification. Local authorities form pro-growth coalitions with non-state interests in developing this prosperous metropolis and establish a strong entrepreneurial attitude toward its economic and urban growth agenda. There have been closely intertwined relations amongst the city’s heritage and tourism, emerging and restructured industries, economic development priorities, non-state interests, changing societal core values, and even gradually empowered civil society in urban affairs. The Hangzhou Municipal Government repeatedly stresses energy saving, pollution emission controls, research and development, inflation controls, unemployment and poverty reduction in its urban prospect. All these will continue to configure the fast-growing Hangzhou’s spatiotemporal urban patterns and dramatic socioeconomic changes in the future. References Barmé, G. R. (2015). A chronology of West Lake and Hangzhou.
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