The impressive expansion of subway systems in China

I have posted in the past a GIF that compares the expansion of the subway systems of Rio and Shanghai between 1979 and 2014. This is a bit embarrassing for Rio, for sure, but let's be honest. Pretty much any developing country and even the USA in their efforts to develop mass transport infrastructure pales in comparison to China. Needless to say that massive expansion of infrastructure like this usually comes at high social and environmental costs that should not be neglected.

Peter Dovak (twitter) has created a new GIF that shows the expansion of subway systems in China between 1990 and 2020, giving a glimpse of the Chinese urban powerhouse. Peter has other great projects you might want to check out, including the Mini Metro Maps of the world.

ps. I saw this on the Transportation Planning and Analysis Facebook group, via Gonçalo Correia. 

China is moving to a Two-Child Policy

 Chris Buckley, reporting for the NYT.

China will allow all couples to have two children, a Communist Party leadership meeting decided on Thursday, bringing an end to decades of restrictive policies that limited most urban families to one child.

The announcement came after the party’s Central Committee concluded a four-day meeting in a heavily guarded hotel in western Beijing where it approved proposals for China’s next five-year development plan, which starts next year. The terse announcement from Xinhua, the state news agency, about the sharp shift in family planning policy gave no details.

Related Links:

• China and US populations compared 
• Has ChinaReached the Lewis Turning Point? more here.
• Demographies of China

Build and they will come, or The Black Hole Theory of Highway Investment

These incredible scenes reminded me of a quote by Plane (1995) about the Black Hole Theory of Highway Investment:

"Initial investments in improved highway facilities result in greater ease of travel and hence altered travel patterns, including an increase in average trip length and in the number of trips being made. Over time, as shown in Figure 18.1, this increased demand stimulated by the initial investment in increased transport supply fuels the need for even more facilities, and the feedback process repeat itself. This familiar phenomenon has been called the black-hole theory because some people claim that investing in highways is like throwing money into a black hole" (Plane, 1995 p.439)

photo credit: Rafael Pereira

Reference:

• Plane, D. A. (1995). Urban transportation: policy alternatives. In Hanson & Giuliano (Eds.) The geography of urban transportation. (2nd ed.) New York ; London: Guilford Press.

The world's largest megacity is larger than you think

Quick fact about China's Pearl River Delta. It is considered the world's largest megacity today and it already has more people than Australia (23 mi), Canada (35 mi) or Argentina (41 mi).

If you want some academic publications on China's Pearl River Delta region, you can fin some interesting studies conducted by researchers from the Seto Lab on Urbanization and Global Change (Yale). I got this Time-Lapse from their website and it gives a glimpse of the fast  urbanization process of this region over the past decades. 

[image credit: IK's World Trip/Flickr]

Assorted Links

1. Beijing Quadrupled in Size in a Decade, NASA Finds
   
   
2. Delhi metro could soon run completely on solar power
   
   
3. 25+ Of The Most Majestic Libraries In The World
   
   
4. What the coast cities of US and China might look like if predictions of rise sea levels are confirmed
   
   
5. Great pictures of "International Borders Around The World"
   
   
6. Good Dani Rodrik powerpoints on labor migration (pdf) via MR
   
   
7. Self-driving Toilets might be the next 'invention' of Google
   
   
8. Google has built a virtual simulation of California to test its self-driving cars (via Francesco M. Cerroni)

Assorted links

1. MOOC on Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys in Coursera, offered by the University of Michigan
   
   
2. More than half of Beijing’s residents live far from the city center, beyond the fifth ring road, and still Beijing is denser than Los Angeles (via Tyler Cowen)
   
   
3. Just added this to my Survival kit: map of the Breweries of Europe
   
   
4. Jennifer Lundquist has interviewed a number of demographersabout their careers, including big shots like Samuel Preston and Monica DasGupta
   
   
5. Pets outnumber children in Brazil
   
   
6. The world's most beautiful metro stations - in pictures
   
   
7. Beautiful Chemical Reactions Filmed with a 4K UltraHD Camera
   
   
8. The Soviet erotic alphabet picture book from 1931 - you might consider reprinting your research proposal
   
   
9. Measuring Brainwaves to Make a New Kind of Bike Map for NYC

Air pollution in Asian Cities

China is internationally famous for its bad air quality. So I was quite surprised to know that India has even higher levels of air pollution in many cities.

ps.  Angel Hsu has pointed out to this interactive map showing the air pollution levels in some Chinese cities in 2014. Data comes from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and you can download it here.

The fake and empty Paris of the East

Besides the already famous Ghost Cities, China also has a growing number of copycat towns, or  'Copy & Paste Cities' as I like to call them.

They have built a fake Hallstatt (Austrian village), a fake Venice and a fake White House. Here is a nice video of their fake and empty Paris (ht Telmo Ribeiro).

Demographic papers published on Science and Nature

It's not everyday you see demographers publishing on journals like Science and Nature. So here is a short list with some of the papers published since 2000.

ps. Massive presence of @IIASAVienna and @WiCVienna researchers!

• (2013) Pervasive Externalities at the Population, Consumption, and Environment Nexus, by Partha S. Dasgupta, Paul R. Ehrlich
  
  
• (2012) Demography's Role in Sustainable Development, Many authors
  
  
• (2011) China’s Demographic History and Future Challenges, by Xizhe Peng
  
  
• (2011) The Demography of Educational Attainment and Economic Growth, by Wolfgang Lutz, Jesus Crespo Cuaresma, Warren Sanderson
  
  
• (2011) 7 Billion and Counting, by David E. Bloom
  
  
• (2008) Health and Urban Living, by Christopher Dye
  
  
• (2008) The coming acceleration of global population ageing, by Wolfgang Lutz, Warren Sanderson, Sergei Scherbov
  
  
• (2006) The Demography of Growing European Identity, by Wolfgang Lutz, Sylvia Kritzinger, Vegard Skirbekk
  
  
• (2005) Average remaining lifetimes can increase as human populations age, by Warren C. Sanderson, Sergei Scherbov
  
  
• (2003) Europe's Population at a Turning Point, Wolfgang Lutz, Brian C. O'Neill, Sergei Scherbov

and my two favorites:

• (2010) Remeasuring Aging, by Warren C. Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov
  
  
• (2011) Global Human Capital: Integrating Education and Population, Wolfgang Lutz, Samir KC
• Interactive Age and Education Pyramids by Country

[Image Credit: Lutz and KC, 2011]

"The Land of Many Palaces"

In the local mongolian language 'Ordos' means “the land of many palaces". This is the title of a documentary (in production) on one of the famous Ghost Cities in China. It is an independent and low budget film featured by Adam Smith & Song Ting and I wish them luck because this is a great material for a documentary!

[I saw this at Paula Morais' facebook wall]

Chinese Ghost Cities + Copy & Paste Cities

It's been a while since I don't make any post on the Chinese empty cities. So here is an updated 12-minute video on the "Chinese Ghost Cities":

Besides these famous Ghost Cities, China has also a growing number of copycat towns, the 'Copy & Paste Cities' as I like to call them. They have built a fake Paris, fake Hallstatt (Austrian village), fake Venice and a fake White House.

China's policies for the aging population

The Oxford Chinese Economy Programme (OXCEP) promoted a series of workshops on June 2013. Here is the presentation by Prof. Zhao Yaohui (China Center for Economic Research at Peking University) on Chinese policies for the aging population.

Related Link:

• Policies against poverty (Prof. Li Shi - Director of the China Institute for the Study of Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University)

A Staggering Migration in China

Tyler Cowen pointed out this nice piece in the NYT on the Chinese government's plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next 10-15 years. Read it again: 250 million.

Related Links:

• Huge Chinese internal migration
• China's empty city (again)
• China's Demographic Future (Part 2)
• Chart of the day: Chinese baby boomers
• The zipper of your pants

Assorted Links

1. 26th ERSA Summer School (ht Leo Monasterio)
   
   
2. Why Has Competition to Get into Top Colleges Become Much Tougher?
   
   
3. Good tuff question
   
   
4. 11 planned cities as seen from space (HT Joao Meirelles)
   
   
5. "Why don't you come over?", a campaign by gandul.info in response to the British one called "Don't come to England"
   
   
6. U.S. overlaid on the Moon for a sense of scale
   
   
7. A 52-meter tall tribute to Oscar Niemeyer in SP
   
   
8. The state of China cities 2012/2013
   
   
9. Worldwide Twitter Activity in Real Time (via infosthetics)

How the U.S. lost out on iPhone Work

@cduhigg and @KeithBradsher for the NYT:

"Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States. In China, it took 15 days"

 This article is  outdated by over a year now  very interesting!

JTRG call for papers: Transport and Logistics in China

Heads Up!

The Journal of Transport Geography (JTRG)* has opened a call for papers for a special issue on The Changing Landscapes of Transport and Logistics in China. More information on Tim Schwanen's blog.

*Impact Factor: 2.538

Recent Real Estate Trends in China

Abstract:

We provide the first multi-city, constant quality land price index for 35 major markets in China. While there is meaningful heterogeneity in land price growth across cities, on average the last nine years have seen land values skyrocket in many markets, not just those on or near the coast. The typical market has experienced double-digit compound average annual growth in real, constant-quality land values. The 2009-2010 stimulus period typically saw large surges in prices. Three notable characteristics about the land value appreciation series are their strong mean reversion at annual frequencies, the strong common factor in their movement, and their very high volatility. Quantities, not just prices, have been sharply increasing in recent years. The typical amount of space supplied via land auctions in our 35 city sample has doubled since 2008. Some local political economy traits such as the time the local Chinese Communist Party leader has been in office are correlated with land supply volume.

I saw this at Andres Marroquin's blog (it goes to my blog-reading list, by the way)

Related links: 

• China's Housing Market: Is a Bubble About to Burst?
• The Economist interactive overview of global house prices and rents
• JTRG call for papers: Transport and Logistics in China

Assorted Links

1. Old People Versus Babies, In One Graph (via Population Econ)
   
   
2. The Environmental Consequences of Urban Growth in Brazil's Amazon
   
   
3. Women, education, and earnings
   
   
4. Understanding the Long-Run Decline in Interstate Migration in the USA, by (via Matthew O'Brien)
   
   
5. How presidential elections are impacted by a 100 million year old coastline (really nice!)
   
   
6. UN Report: Estado de las ciudades de América Latina y el Caribe 2012
   
   
7. Planned Cities Seen From Space (HT Bernardo Furtado)
   
   
8. Identifying Communities in Traffic Flow (by Ed Manley)

Chart of the day: Chinese baby boomers

[Image Credit: Joseph Cotterill - FT Alphaville]

[Image Credit: Joseph Cotterill - FT Alphaville]

Related Link:

• 'Defusing China's demographic timebomb'

Assorted Links

1. Car use is peaking in the rich world and exploding in China
   
   
2. Confirmation Bias and the iPhone 5
   
   
3. The fractals at the heart of African designs
   
   
4. Interactive timeline of migration in and out of the UK 1964-2010 (via Alan Smith)
   
   
5. The gap between the nominal and official number of urban residents is large enough to fit the entire population of Brazil  (via Tyler Cowen)
   
   
6. Honduran charter cities in troubled muddy waters (here and here)
   
   
7. Dubai: City on the Move

DUBAI - city on the move from geoff tompkinson on Vimeo.