Fed up with suburban sprawl, Chinese urban planners are advocating cities where all needs can be met within walking distance
For Chen Yan, a lot can be done within a 15-minute walk of his apartment in Beijing: taking his dog for a walk in the park, buying his favorite berries from a local market stall, and getting medicine from the community hospital—all except going to work.
Instead, it takes Chen over an hour and three subway transfers every morning from his home in Changping district to his office in Haidian district, and then he has to make the return trip in the evening. “Every day is about running and running. I don’t have time to enjoy life. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m living for,” the 27-year-old programmer tells TWOC.
In 2021, a report from the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design noted that over 14 million people in 44 major Chinese cities have a daily commute of more than 60 minutes. About 30 percent of residents in the capital, Beijing, spent more than one hour commuting each way—a phenomenon known as “extreme commute (极端通勤).” By comparison, most member states of the EU had had a commuting time between 24 and 28 minutes on average before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a 2019 report.
Yang Tingting is a Chinese editor at The World of Chinese. Interested in telling Chinese stories, she writes mainly about culture, language, and society.
