Speeches: Ed Dotson, World Bank

"Urban public transport development in China: coordinating infrastructure investment and land use planning policies to pave the way for integrated public transport networks"

How are urban public transport and land use planning linked and how can decisions in the one domain can affect the other?

There are two basic linkages:

1. Land use planning that allows low density of development permits or encourages development that puts homes, schools, workplaces, shops and other activities further apart than higher density development, while at the same time reducing the number of trips made per square kilometre. This makes it difficult to provide financially viable public transport services that can offer the same level of service as the private car. At the same time, the low densities provide adequate space for construction of roads and parking areas, and the development plans are structured around the road networks. The suburbs in American cities are the most obvious examples. The opposite end of the spectrum are the high density cores of many Chinese and European cities, suburbs or satellite towns in European cities where higher density development is planned around the rail line and linked bus/tram services, which are provided in advance of the travel demand, or cities like Curitiba in Brasil or Singapore, where the whole city is planned around the public transport network. The higher passenger demand that this type of development generates facilitates the provision of high capacity, high quality, convenient public transport, with journey times and costs at least as good as private cars.
2. Public transport service provision that is of poor quality, lacking in capacity or lagging the market demand for mobility encourages people to seek alternative means of transport - which in China to date has meant bicycles, but as GDP rises will mean motor cycles (where permitted) and cars. This is turn fuels demands for more roads, and greater allocation of resources for road construction - which in turn encourages lower density land use plans based on car rather than PT usage.

Today, 37% of the Chinese population live in the city. By 2010, this will be 50%. This must be a nightmare scenario for today's land use and mobility planners in China. Do you agree? Can this be avoided?

(The figures the World Bank is using are slightly different - data we have suggests 40% of the population lives in urban areas. This figure is expected to increase to 50% by 2020, not 2010.)

NO the growth in the urban population cannot be avoided - urbanization is one of the key transitions in the Chinese economy - from a from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial society. (The other key transition is from a centrally planned economy to a more globally integrated market-based economy.) Urbanisation could perhaps occur at a different rate to that anticipated, but as China's economy develops, the location of economic activity will shift to urban areas.

NO - it does not have to be a nightmare scenario - planning urban development is what we are trained to do - but it is one that challenges us to be creative and innovative.