William Tompson (OECD)

“Urbanising China”

Abstract

China anticipates an increase in its urban population of around 300 million over the next decades, having seen its urban population more than double to around 712 million between 1990s and 2012. China’s management of this process, which is without precedent in terms of speed or scale, will have huge and lasting implications – economic, social and environmental – for both China and the world. China’s experience also casts light on some of the theoretical debates surrounding urbanisation. Professor William Tompson, head of the OECD’s Urban Development Programme, will examine the explosive growth of China’s cities and its evolving urbanisation policies, underlining the ways in which the growth drivers of the recent past must give way to a different approach to urban development.