Globalization and Energy Consumption in the Yangtze River Delta

Abstract

The Yangtze River Delta (also called Yangzi Jiang Delta, Tai Lake Region) is at the intersection of Chinese coastal regions and the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, including the triangular-shaped territory of Shanghai city, Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province. The urban build-up in the area has given rise what may be the largest concentration of adjacent metropolitan areas in the world (Gottmann, 1961). It covers an area of 99,600 km² and is home to over 105 million people as of 2010, of which an estimated 80 million are urban. Lo and Marcotullio (2001) referred the delta as a major player in the newly emerged “world manufacturing belt” of Asia, due to its huge manufacturing capacity. Scholars have focused on the Yangtze River Delta since the 1990s, when the region’s economic performance and urban changes caught the world’s attention (Zhang, 2006). Hall (2002) contended that the Yangtze River Delta provides a paradigm (the Yangtze paradigm) of the 21st century megacity in terms of economic growth and spatial expansion. Friedmann (2005) studied the Yangtze River Delta in an examination of China’s urban transition and its bottom-up urbanization. More recently, the Institute for Yangtze River Delta Socioeconomic Development at Nanjing University has published a series of research reports on the Yangtze River Delta, including Liu and Zheng (2011, 2012).