Study On The Development Path Of New District In Underdevelopment Cities

After experiencing the rapid urbanization for decades, a large portion of Chinese cities demand for great spatial expansion, such as the emergence of new districts. Moreover, developing new districts based on careful planning could contribute to promote urban transformation, improve urban structure, increase influence of the city, and accelerate urban improvement. However, we should objectively evaluate the usefulness of developing new districts or new towns. Nowadays, some of the Chinese cities are experiencing development problems, such as “ghost town” or “empty town” due to the appearance of their rational phenomena, known as the “hot in developing new towns or new districts”.The history of new districts in China started with designating and developing the special economic zone. Afterwards, it experienced the development of the open economic zone, bonded area, high-tech industrial development zone, and, to date, the new district at national level. Scholars realize that development of new district has strong association with urban economic development. Unfortunately, underdeveloped cities lack the attraction for money and resources. Thus, construction of new districts are usually based on experience learned from the new town development in developed countries. Also, associated researches primarily focus on economically well-developed cities. Most importantly, great differentiations, such as location, motive for economic development, and city function, exist between underdeveloped and developed cities. Thus, underdeveloped cities should explore development path based on its characteristics.New districts and old town, as the most important components in urban areas, constitute the main body of almost every city. Thus, urban development must contain certain pattern during its process regardless the economic development status. And at the same time, new district development should also contain differentiations considering characteristics of different cities. In this paper, three economically under developed cities, Chaoyang in Liaoning Province, Nanyang in Henan Province, and Guilin in Guangxi Province, are selected as the case studies. The paper begins with the history of new district development cases in China and in other countries, and summarizes their common patterns and trends as fundamental examples for underdeveloped cities to learn. Second, the author summarizes and concludes the necessity, thinking thread, and implementation outcome of new districts in the selected cities. Problems of and suggestions for new districts are raised based on these cases. Finally, the paper ends by striving to provide new district development path for underdeveloped cities with similar features in urban development characteristics and motive for new district development.