New Urbanisation and "Go West" Policies

This contribution focuses on the spatial features of the new towns in inland China that have been approved and are now under construction. The reference framework within which they are studied is the much broader agenda of the so-called “go west” policies. The latter are strategic policies which, starting with the Five-Year Plans launched in the eighties and thanks to massive public investments, have shifted the country’s expansive growth from the coastal regions towards inner China. The six selected cities were chosen because their foundation was specifically linked not only to infrastructures, especially long distance, high speed railways between inland China and the country’s coastal regions, but also international trade.