Transport and Land Use in Chinese Cities: International Comparisons

Abstract

With China’s economy booming, questions have been raised about whether human life and environmental sustainability worldwide will suffer severe decline if China, the most populous country on the earth, were to increase its urban automobile ownership and usage to the level of the United States. A planner at one large automobile company believes that ‘there could be 70 million motorcycles, 30 million lorries and 100 million cars in China by 2015’ (Hook and Replogle, 1996). ‘The potential effects of this car explosion — on the quality of human life and the sustainability of all life — are staggering’ (Tunali, 1996: 4). If the Chinese were to drive as much as Americans, ‘the carbon emissions from transportation in urban China alone would exceed 1 billion tons, roughly as much as released from all transportation worldwide today’ (O’Meara, 1999: 143).