China is set to flex its industrial muscles on a scale the world has never seen -- with a 'mega-city' twice as big as Wales and a population of 42million.China seems to have been overtaken by development megalomania. The proposed city will pave over the entire Pearl River Delta to create a city with a population density of only 1000 per square kilometer, or one thirtieth the density of Mumbai, India, or one fourteenth the density of Shanghai. In other words, a catastrophic case of urban sprawl.
The project's senior consultant Ma Xiangming said: 'The idea is that when the cities are integrated, the residents can travel around freely and use the health care and other facilities in the different areas.'
All that this scheme will insure is a massive waste of energy and time as people are forced to commute long distances to obtain basic services that could be provided, and in a sane community would be provided, at the local level.
Well China does everything on a gigantic scale, including screw-up, apparently. The key to energy efficiency and the good life is to concentrate human dwellings on a small land base surrounded by parks and agricultural land, so that people have little distance to travel either to work, to shop or to find places for relaxation and recreation. That way urban areas can be rid of automobiles and the stink, noise, waste of energy and hazard to life and limb to which automobiles give rise.
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Can England be once again a green and pleasant land
