The National 14th Five-Year Plan for New Urbanization has been released, which mentions promoting the transformation of super-large and megacities. Its purpose is to break the previous spread-the-pie development approach, promote city slimming, and reasonably control population density.
focuses on general manufacturing, regional logistics bases, professional markets, etc., as well as over-concentrated medical, higher education and other resources.
This plan can be said to hit the nail on the head and hit the nail on the head in solving the "big city disease". Take higher education as an example. Our country currently has a huge number of colleges and universities, with a population of more than 10,000 and a large number of students. In addition to the faculty and staff and service personnel surrounding them, the number is even greater.
If a city has more than 300 to 500 universities, its permanent population will increase by 400,000 to 500,000. This is the size of a medium-sized city.
Then the country proposes to relieve over-concentration of higher education resources. Which cities will have a greater impact?
According to the 2021 Zhiyan annual list of the top 100 cities in terms of number of universities in the country, there are three cities with more than 80 universities, namely Beijing, Wuhan and Guangzhou.
Beijing has long started to reduce its costs, and many universities have moved to Xiongan New Area unplanned. Guangzhou is one of the four first-tier cities in my country and the core city of in the Greater Bay Area. This is also an important national strategy, so Guangzhou should not be greatly affected.
As for Wuhan, it’s hard to say.
As of the end of 2021, there are 83 colleges and universities in Wuhan, with more than 1.2 million college students.
Among the 7 megacities and 14 megacities announced by the country in 2021, Wuhan ranks first among the 14 megacities with an urban population of 9.95 million.
And this list is based on 2020 Census data. This year was also the year Wuhan was most affected by the epidemic, with a large number of people leaving the country, so this data has certain inaccuracies.
Sure enough, in 2021, Wuhan's population will return in large numbers. According to the latest released data, Wuhan's new population increased by 1.21 million last year, ranking first in the country. Therefore, there is no doubt that Wuhan has become a megacity.
At the beginning of this year, the country proposed the direction of future urbanization development, which mainly includes three aspects:
First, strictly control the establishment of counties and cities into districts;
Second, decentralize megacities;
Third, strictly control provincial capital cities. expansion.
Wuhan has already achieved county-free status, and the first article will not have a great impact on Wuhan. However, the second and third items will have a greater impact on the future development of Wuhan.
Coupled with the national 14th Five-Year Plan for New Urbanization, it has once again proposed the decentralization of megacities and megacities. For Wuhan, subtraction may be the mainstream of future development.
How to do subtraction effectively? Alleviating the over-concentration of higher education resources is one of the most effective means for Wuhan. In fact, Wuhan has already taken action.
Wuhan not only has many double first-class universities, higher vocational colleges , but also many independent colleges . In the process of the transfer of independent schools in recent years, due to the early involvement of private capital in independent colleges in Wuhan, these rival colleges with relatively high-quality resources have chosen counties and cities around Wuhan to run their schools.
For example, Jiayu County in Xianning City, Hong'an County in Huanggang City, and Jingshan City in Jingmen City have attracted varying numbers of independent colleges to set up their locations here. This can be regarded as Wuhan's early planning for the evacuation of higher education. But this is still a drop in the bucket for the more than 80 universities in Wuhan.
More than ten years ago, when Hubei proposed the slogan "One Main and Two Seconds", the main direction was to make Wuhan, the provincial capital city bigger and stronger. Major enterprises, scientific research units, universities and colleges from all over the province have moved to Wuhan. For example, Yichang Gezhouba Group , Xiangyang China Railway 11th Bureau , and Jingzhou Yangtze River Fisheries Institute, Hubei Institute of Land and Resources, Yangtze University Wuhan Campus , etc.
In addition to the transfer of independent colleges, since the Ministry of Education now prohibits colleges and universities from building new campuses in other places, Wuhan is also looking for another way.Xiangyang is a sub-central city in Hubei, but its higher education resources are not rich and its strength is not strong. Therefore, it has introduced universities from Wuhan to support the establishment of various graduate training bases.
Of course, the above measures cannot substantially relieve the over-concentration of higher education resources. This time, the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan for New Urbanization has pointed out a new direction. For Wuhan, it means vigorously relocating some colleges and universities as a whole to reduce the overly dense regional population and the overall size of the city.
For Wuhan, this is a subtraction, but for the cities that host these universities, it is an addition. After all, one university can net increase the urban population by tens of thousands.
Wuhan is ushering in major changes in development. Which cities will benefit? In fact, Hubei also has specific countermeasures. Previously, Hubei implemented the Wuhan city circle , Xiangshi Suishen city agglomeration, and Yijing Jingen city agglomeration.
Now these three city clusters , Hubei has refined them and proposed the concept of three metropolitan areas, namely Wu'e Huanghuang metropolitan area, Yijingjing metropolitan area, and Xiangyang metropolitan area.
So for the three cities of Ezhou , Huangshi and Huanggang , they will be three core peripheral cities integrated into Wuhan and integrated with Wuhan in the future.
Wuhan has evacuated non-core functions of the city and evacuated overly dense higher education resources. Ezhou, Huangshi and Huanggang will benefit most.
