HEALTHY URBANIZATION: A NEW CONCEPTION AND POLICY EXPLANATION
CHEN Ming-xing1,2, YE Chao3
1. Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
2. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
3. College of Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, China
Abstract Urbanization is one of the most significant changes occurring in contemporary human society. Although Chinese scholars have been made a long-term and deep study systematically on China's urbanization, lots of specific questions still have not been solved effectively. At present, the Chinese urbanization has entered a new stage. Recently, unprecedented numbers and the scales of cities have been dramatically increased in China. Consequently, both the researches of China's demographics as well as the pronouncements of Chinese policy makers regard the country's growing urbanization levels as a sign of progress. However, the high-speed urbanization process faced many severe problems. Therefore, this paper presents the development conception of healthy urbanization. Healthy urbanization, economic growth, land conversion and migration are coordinated. It is essential to promote the human-centered development in a comprehensive way. The process is also sustainable which means that the quantity and quality of natural resources can meet the demands of urbanization, and ecological environment can be improved by adapting itself. This research has three theoretical sources including "evolution of the health conception and the rise of system health science", "evolution of development conception and human development index", and "evolution of the human-natural relationship and sustainable development theory". The authors point out that (1) healthy urbanization is the universal ideals of humanity, which should be used as the basic objective of long-term strategy of urbanization; (2) healthy urbanization depend on the improving on living level, educational level and medical care; (3) healthy urbanization emphasize the interaction between urban areas and rural areas; (4) healthy urbanization need the coordination of the relationship between human and land, a resource-saving and environment-friendly mode.
2011, Vol. 26 
