URBAN  PLANNING

Xianyang’s municipal government has the following objectives:

• Promote urbanization and industrialization in the context

of the socialist market economy.

• Develop and improve the city’s functions.

• Create a modern city.

• Transform the pattern of infrastructure construction.

• Provide the proper environment for economic development.

The Challenge of Rapid Urbanization

The level of urbanization and per capita GNP are closely interrelated. Urbanization brings together people and productive forces, and organizes them in a way that makes intensive development possible. Advanced scientific and management techniques increase labor productivity, creating greater economic value than nonurbanized areas. Xianyang used to follow a policy of “industrialization without urbanization.”  Although its industrialization rate was 47 percent, its urbanization rate was only about 28 percent—a condition that hindered the healthy development of both urbanization and industrialization. Xianyang’s level of urbanization will reach 30 percent by the end of 2000. Then it will enter a stage of rapid development, during which the municipal authorities must welcome new ideas, dispel their misgivings about urbanization, overcome various manmade obstacles, formulate preferential policies, and promote the development of the central and smaller cities. At the same time, while they must not pursue urbanization indiscriminately, they must be prepared for its inevitability.

source: www.adb.org