Beijing government offices or municipal departments should move tothe suburban district of Tongzhou in 2017. The decision to move Beijing offices out of the city center is supported by many reasons including traffic congestion and pollution but it is also part of the plan of creating the Jing-Jin-Ji, a megacity around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei.
The decision of the Beijing government to move government offices to Tongzhou is not new in the Chinese environment. In fact, cities like Guangzhou, Qingdao and Kunming have already moved their government offices out of the city center in order toimprove the urbanisation planand promote the development of the hubs and urban areas. Until now, Beijing still doesn’t have a newly developed area like Pudong district in Shanghai or Binhai subprovincial district of Tianjin, but the moveof Beijing government offices to Tongzhou will change itslandscapesince this areawill benefit from new developments in the real estate sector, as well as receive improved public infrastructuresin education, healthcare, cultural events and industries in the district.
It is not the first attempt of Beijing government to develop suburbs: satellite towns like Shunyi, Changping, Liangxiang and Tongzhou were already meant to slowly trying to evacuate the city center, but because they lacked of focus and directions, theydidn’t really developed at that time. In 2012, the government decided to investon 3 places:Tongzhou, Shunyi and Yizhuang and mostly to make Tongzhou become the new rich and developed suburb area.
The idea is to move to Tongzhou by 2017 not only government offices but alsoindustries, business and logistics companies, public hospitals, universitiesetc…in order to make Tongzhoubecome a center for art, culture and scientific research.
The choice of moving government offices to Tongzhou will benefitto both the areas of Tongzhou and Beijing. As everyone knows, Beijing nowadays is characterised by traffic jam, pollution, overpopulation and intense pressure on its citizens, for all these reasons moving offices to Tongzhou could be a reasonable decision to alleviate the pressure on the city, reduce the air pollution and the overpopulation problem. On the other side, it will bring advantages also to the suburb of Tongzhou which will grow in population, will develop its economy and will play an important role in the growth of the city.
2 million people should move out of the city center by 2020.
However, there will be also some disadvantages , the real estate market will increase in price so it could be quite expensive to rent or buy an apartment there (government already took measure to avoid speculation on properties), the lands will give space to construction and new buildings, and the expressway from Beijing to Tongzhou will be more and more congested, but Chinese people are getting used with it.
Sources
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-11/26/content_22519632.htm
http://www.hubgold.com/2015/11/27/tongzhou-beijing-municipal-government-moved-to-internet-users-are-most-concerned/
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_49a351cd0102vm9c.html