**Abstract**

Chinese cities have primarily evolved around walking, bicycling and public transport with their dense, linear form and mixed land use. The recent urban growth spurt has involved private motorisation, but because of land constraints and not fearing urban density, as in Anglo-Saxon cities, the same dense urbanism has been maintained. This means that automobiles do not easily fit into this traditional fabric and especially the historic walking fabric. Issues like congestion and air quality have become major constraints to further growth. Using Beijing and Shanghai as case studies, the next phase of urban and transport development now appears to be to reduce car use with the dramatic growth in urban rail as in most developed cities in the twenty-first century. This decoupling of car use from economic growth is consistent with other developed cities but is a first for emerging cities, hence the paper aims to explain this pattern from the cultural, political and especially urban fabric perspectives. The application to other Chinese cities and emerging cities is now possible following Beijing and Shanghai's lead.

**Keywords:** car use, rise and decline, urban form, economic factors, cultural and political factors, Beijing, Shanghai

### **1. Introduction**

China has undergone rapid urban development with its national urbanisation rate surging from 10.6% in 1949 to 56.1% in 2015 [1]. As a result, urban population across the nation has increased by 10.81 million per annum in the period. Personal income, the principal economic driver of private vehicle ownership [2], has remained on a double-digit1 high-growth trajectory in most of China since 2001. Urban population growth and economic growth have thus led to growth in private ownership of passenger cars (see **Figure 1**).<sup>2</sup> Besides these factors, administrative guidance and political imperatives have also significantly affected the level of automobile ownership in China [3]. However the question in this paper is whether car use is continuing to rise in key cities or whether it is following the trend in developed cities to decouple this from economic growth.

Chinese cities, along with their respective provinces, have increased in car ownership over recent years and now provincially range in car ownership from a meagre 70 per 1000 persons in Gansu up to 209 per 1000 in Beijing (2017 data), with a

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*Sustainability in Urban Planning and Design*

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<sup>1</sup> The growth rate of personal income was actually 8.8% in 2009.

<sup>2</sup> It includes large, medium-, small- and mini-sized passenger cars.

#### **Figure 1.**

*Private ownership of passenger cars per 1000 people in China (unit) and its annual growth rate (%) from 1995 to 2014. Source: Compiled based on data provided by [4].*

#### **Figure 2.**

*Private ownership of passenger cars per 1000 people across China in 2017 (unit). Source: Compiled based on data provided by [7].*

national average of 122 per 1000 persons (see **Figure 2**).3 This national level of car ownership is less than countries such as Swaziland, El Salvador, Honduras, Guyana and Azerbaijan [5]. These levels are nowhere near the car ownership levels found

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**2.2 Shanghai**

soared up to 5040 US Dollars in 2008.

*The Rise and Decline of Car Use in Beijing and Shanghai DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90130*

mented car management policies4

significantly less developed countries.

ment than in developed cities.

**2.1 Beijing**

in cities in more developed countries. For example, in 2005–2006, privately owned cars averaged 640, 647, 522 and 463 cars per 1000 persons in American, Australian, Canadian and European cities respectively [6]. Even between China's two most significant cities, Shanghai and Beijing, the difference is very large (113 compared to 209 cars per 1000 persons, respectively), partly due to Shanghai having imple-

 from 1994. Thus Chinese provinces and cities, even during what could be called a rampant period of motorisation, had by 2017 not even come close to car ownership rates in more automobile-dependent regions and were even less nationally than in some

**2. The rise and decline of car use in Beijing and Shanghai**

Added to this perspective, we now find that recent car ownership growth rates are falling. The question to be addressed in this paper is therefore whether a decline in car use and a structural change is starting to occur in Beijing and Shanghai, like in many developed cities. The paper begins by examining some trends of car use in Beijing and Shanghai. It then tries to explain the reasons why car use is beginning to decline and why this could be happening at an earlier stage of economic develop-

Beijing, like all Chinese cities, was dominated by bicycling in the twentieth century

and as shown in **Figure 3** had over 60% of daily trips by cycling in 1986, but this quickly was overtaken by a rapid growth in car use; these modes crossed in 2005, and from there a different story emerges that would have been expected in a rapidly emerging global city. Car use begins to plateau in the 2000s and starts declining since 2011. The growth trajectory that then takes over is transit as cycling continues to fall but then plateaus or rises slightly perhaps due to e-bikes as seen in the data below on Shanghai. The Beijing transit system is shown by mode in **Figure 4**. The dramatic growth after 2007 that has impacted so strongly on modal share with cars is the role of the metro that continues to grow significantly right through to the most recent data. Beijing was the first city in China to inaugurate metro rail into its transport infrastructure, with the first line opening in 1969 [9]. This development was further pursued and received a promotional boost leading up to the 2008 Olympic Games held in Beijing [10]. The metro has been expanded ever since and has been embraced by the residents of Beijing with a daily patronage of around 9 million using the fast, high-quality system. This follows the rapid expansion of Beijing's metro system from an operational length of 142 km in 2007 to 555 km by 2015. Beijing's metro is now the second largest after Shanghai (588 km) in China [11, 12]. The metro has become a significant transport mode, though the traditional bus is still the predominant travel choice of public transport. As this is measured in boardings, it would be more favourable to the metro if passenger kilometres were used as bus trips tend to be shorter.

Shanghai transport data are different to Beijing as they include walking as well as e-bikes besides bicycling in the modal split as set out in **Figure 5**. But like

<sup>4</sup> Shanghai has adopted the Singapore-style paid auction system to limit new car registration since 1994. The number of quotas issued to public applicants is less than 10,000 every month. The average bid price

<sup>3</sup> Beijing and Shanghai are two of the four municipalities directly under the central government. Hence, this comparison is made with other provinces rather than cities.

in cities in more developed countries. For example, in 2005–2006, privately owned cars averaged 640, 647, 522 and 463 cars per 1000 persons in American, Australian, Canadian and European cities respectively [6]. Even between China's two most significant cities, Shanghai and Beijing, the difference is very large (113 compared to 209 cars per 1000 persons, respectively), partly due to Shanghai having implemented car management policies4 from 1994.

Thus Chinese provinces and cities, even during what could be called a rampant period of motorisation, had by 2017 not even come close to car ownership rates in more automobile-dependent regions and were even less nationally than in some significantly less developed countries.

Added to this perspective, we now find that recent car ownership growth rates are falling. The question to be addressed in this paper is therefore whether a decline in car use and a structural change is starting to occur in Beijing and Shanghai, like in many developed cities. The paper begins by examining some trends of car use in Beijing and Shanghai. It then tries to explain the reasons why car use is beginning to decline and why this could be happening at an earlier stage of economic development than in developed cities.
