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Date of Award

Spring 2012

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Major

Urban Studies

First Advisor

Professor Xiangming Chen and Professor Carol Clark

Abstract

China has attained a miraculous two digit economic growth in the last three decades. Contributing to this growth was the inflow of migrant workers, amounting to more than 160 million today, from the countryside to cities. However, deprived of economic opportunities, excluded from the urban social provision, and denied an urban identity, these migrant workers are not fully integrated into cites: their urbanization remains shallow. As a result of government failures and as a potential source of inefficiencies in the economy, shallow urbanization should be rectified. To address this problem, central and local governments of China have proposed various policies, among which the most genuine and systematic are the policies of Chongqing. The policy scheme, featuring household registration reform, public housing projects, and land coupon experiments, may help to deepen urbanization. This paper looks at shallow urbanization from both theoretical and empirical perspective, and evaluates Chongqing's experiment on its effectiveness and sustainability in deepening urbanization. It concludes that Chongqing's policy experiment is well intended and designed, but certain problems inherent in the policy may hinder it from being fully effective and sustainable. It finally makes suggestions for improvements.

Comments

Senior thesis completed at Trinity College for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Urban Studies. Accessible to members of the Trinity community only.

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