China Begins Work on World's First Megalopolis
Mega city of 42 million is a harbinger of the future of cities on Earth.
From our "Shades of Blade Runner" department comes this story: China is planning to create the world's biggest mega city by merging nine cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million.
City planners in south China have laid out an ambitious plan to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta.
The "Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One" project will create a 16,000-square-mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales. In "American" measurements, that's approximately 700 times the size of Manhattan.
The new mega-city will cover a large part of China's manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.
Over the next six years, around 150 major infrastructure projects will mesh the transport, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine cities together, at a cost of some 2 trillion yuan (£190 billion, or $300-plus billion dollars). An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong.
Click here to read more about this amazing project.
Source: London Telegraph
