At that time, a movie "Chen Huansheng Entering the City" outlined the strangeness and reverie of rural people to the city in that era. Nowadays, the city has long meant not only lights, telephones, upstairs and downstairs, but also the lifeblood of a country and a province's economic development.
Specific to our province, how to stand out in the background of the rise of central China? The Outline of Urbanization Development in Shanxi Province just issued by the provincial government puts accelerating the urbanization process in an important strategic position in the province's economic and social development. Urbanization is becoming an important proposition to accelerate the development of our province.
Times call for urbanization
In fact, the urbanization problem faced by our province is both an opportunity and a challenge. Compared with the national urbanization rate of 40.53% in 2003, the urbanization rate of our province is only 38.8%. Observing this figure, the whole country is lower than the world average by 10 percentage point, and our province is at a lower level in the whole country.
At the same time, compared with another important index, the industrialization level of the whole province has reached 48.55% in 2003. Obviously, the level of urbanization has lagged behind the level of industrialization. The hidden fact behind this comparison is that, for a long time, the industrial structure of our province, which is mainly based on coal mining, coking and other resources exploitation, has led to the disconnection between urbanization and industrialization, and the two should complement each other.
Because resource-based industries are mostly distributed in areas far away from cities and towns, the development of these industries and the development of cities and towns have become "two skins". The development of mineral resources determines the absolute proportion of resource-based towns in the total number of cities in our province.
Towns of this origin often replace urban development with mineral development and industrial development, and replace urban functions and municipal infrastructure with industrial functions, industrial stations and facilities. With the rapid increase of industrialization, urbanization is restrained, the regional function of the city is weak, the carrier function is imperfect, and the problems existing in the quality of urban construction also arise accordingly.
Take coal-mining cities as an example, their main industries are born around coal mining, and the industrial chains of cities such as food, clothing, housing and transportation mostly rely on the outside of the province, which have weak economic and technological ties with the surrounding areas of the city and lack the ability to drive regional industries. Especially in central cities at all levels, due to the imperfect urban functions, the radiation function to the region is generally weak, and it is difficult to promote the overall development of the region.
The urban chain needs to be improved urgently.
To measure the development level of a city, two indicators are commonly used, population density and economic aggregate.
However, according to this, the situation of 1 1 prefecture-level cities in our province is not optimistic. Taiyuan and Datong have more than 6.5438+million non-agricultural population, while Yangquan, Changzhi, Shuozhou, Xinzhou and Lvliang have 200-65438+million non-agricultural population, and some cities even have less than 200,000. In 2003, only Taiyuan, Datong, Changzhi and other cities had a GDP of more than10 billion yuan, while Jinzhong, Yuncheng, Xinzhou and Lvliang all had less than 5 billion yuan. Several provinces with similar population in our province, such as Xi, Harbin and Changchun. The total population of the city exceeds 6 million, and the GDP basically reaches 654.38+000 billion.
As a provincial capital city, Taiyuan plays a very important role in improving the overall status and function of the urban system in our province. In recent years, Taiyuan's position in the national urban system has declined. The geographical environment of our province is quite different, and there are obvious regional differences in northern Shanxi, Jinzhong, southern Shanxi and southeastern Shanxi, so the role of regional central cities and sub-central cities is particularly important. At present, except for Datong, which has a certain population size and economic strength, other cities are small and medium-sized cities with a small population and weak regional functions.
The urbanization model of our province is characterized by extensive expansion based on various towns, with a large number of small cities, small scale and poor quality, and the construction of central cities, metropolitan areas and urban agglomerations is slow. Competition in economic development among cities is greater than cooperation, infrastructure construction is fragmented, and there is a lack of enjoyment, resulting in waste of resources and some "urban diseases". For example, a city has education parks and industrial parks, and another city not far from it also has similar university towns and development zones.
If cities are compared to "points" and the integration and coordination between cities are compared to "chains", then this chain has not yet formed.
Promote the construction of urban agglomerations at different levels.
The urbanization of our province can no longer take the old road of going it alone, but must shift from extension expansion to connotation development, and take the road of cooperation, radiation and expansion. To put it more vividly, urbanization is not only to build a pearl of a town, but also to string these scattered beads into a necklace.
This necklace is what experts call the construction of metropolitan areas and urban agglomerations. Taiyuan metropolitan bears the brunt of the construction.
Jinzhong Economic Zone, with Taiyuan as the center, is the most concentrated area of towns and industries in Shanxi, and also the most dynamic area in our province. The construction of taiyuan metropolitan is to enhance the comprehensive competitiveness and radiation of Taiyuan while developing regional economy, promote the spatial agglomeration of industry and population and the formation of industrial chain and industrial cluster in our province, accelerate the expansion of city scale, enhance the spatial agglomeration among cities and optimize the spatial allocation of economic activities. In the metropolitan area, the relationship between cities and towns has changed from competition to cooperation, and each city undertakes certain functions in it, making it bigger together and improving the competitiveness of a single city, town and the whole metropolitan area and urban agglomeration.
The next level of taiyuan metropolitan is to accelerate the development of central cities and sub-central cities in northern Shanxi, southeastern Shanxi and southern Shanxi. For example, relying on the three advantages of economic location, historical and cultural city and coal resources, Datong accelerates the transformation of resource-based economy and enhances the comprehensive service function of the city. Changzhi City relies on a relatively strong comprehensive industrial base and a good regional resource combination advantage to strengthen the function of a central city. The construction of the central city of Jinnan Economic Zone should give full play to the advantages of Linfen's heavy industry and industrial technology, Houma's location, transportation and commerce, and Yuncheng's southern gateway, Hedong culture and regional economy.
Below this level is the construction of small towns with the Universiade as the axis, focusing on cultivating county towns and central towns with development advantages and potential. With the advancement of urbanization in our province, the road map of urban chain construction has been clear.
Building a sustainable urban system
To realize the prospect of urbanization in our province, it is the most urgent work to build a strong support system, and economic support is the most critical.
For the central cities in our province, the economic framework focuses on improving the comprehensive competitiveness of cities, aims at realizing technological innovation, institutional innovation and environmental innovation, focuses on information technology, biotechnology, new material technology, advanced manufacturing technology and clean energy technology, and actively develops high-tech industries based on high-tech industrial development zones and economic and technological development zones. At the same time, adopt high-tech and advanced applicable technologies to transform traditional industries. The development of the tertiary industry has always been the focus of the adjustment of urban industrial structure, focusing on the development of modern service industries such as finance and insurance, information services, logistics and distribution, professional services, technical consultation, community services, tourism and leisure, cultural media, and guiding and supporting the development of non-compulsory education, sports and fitness services, non-basic medical services, cultural publishing and other industries.
People flow, logistics, information flow and capital flow, these four elements of modern urbanization all depend on high-speed and efficient infrastructure. However, the shortage of urban facilities is seriously plaguing many cities in our province. From the perspective of the infrastructure level of the city, except for the per capita living area, urban population water penetration rate and public toilets per 10,000 people, the per capita daily domestic water consumption, sewage treatment rate, per capita public green space, urban gas penetration rate and the number of public (electric) cars per 10,000 people in our province are quite different from the national average. Therefore, the overall layout of regional infrastructure and the improvement of urban infrastructure system have become an important support for urbanization.
In addition, the construction of modern eco-city resource-based towns, as an important concept of urbanization, is being absorbed and realized by our province. Changing the "black and yellow" image of Shanxi and creating "green Shanxi" will become the theme of urbanization in the future.
Scientific thinking needs more feasible measures to ensure. In order to realize the blueprint of urbanization in our province as soon as possible, we need to find new breakthroughs in the investment and financing channels of urban construction, improve the land management system, deepen the reform of household registration system, and establish and improve the social security system.
From the construction of taiyuan metropolitan to the promotion of urbanization in Shanxi, from economic support to network support, ecological support and a series of safeguard measures in place, the urbanization of our province will embark on the road of sustainable development.