Guangzhou and Foshan recently issued an overall construction plan to establish a 629 square kilometers high-quality development integration pilot area for pushing urban integration in ecology, transportation, industry, culture and society.
Both Guangzhou and Foshan are located in the core area of the Pearl River Delta, which are geographically connected with the same historical heritage and culture. As for the economic aggregate, they are the second and third largest city in Guangdong, accounting for nearly 40% of the province's GDP volume.
According to the plan, the pilot area includes nine districts and one administrative committee of two cities, (Panyu District, Liwan District, Baiyun District, Huadu District, Nansha District in Guangzhou; Nanshai District, Shunde District, Sanshui District, Chancheng District and Sanlongwan high-end innovation administrative committee in Foshan). The total area is about 629 square kilometers, including 275 square kilometers in Guangzhou and 354 square kilometers in Foshan.The pilot area will promote a "1 + 4" integrated development pattern around the 197 km boundary between Guangzhou and Foshan. "1" refers to the Guangzhou South Railway Station-Foshan Sanlongwan-Liwan Hailong Area, "4" refers to the Huadu-Sanshui District, Baiyun-Nanhai District, Liwan - Nanhai District and Nansha-Shunde Districts.
Highlighting high-quality and integration, the plan proposes three goals in different phases. By 2022, initially, the pilot area will establish a framework for a cross-regional collaborative governance system, and become a policy innovation center for the Greater Bay Area.
Since the integrated development of Guangzhou and Foshan, the two cities have built 27 inter-city roads and 5 railways, one of which, the Guangfo Line helps to cut the travel time between the two cities from 90 minutes to 30 minutes.
Regarding traffic integration in the future, it plans to build 29 more inter-city roads for improving the integration of the public transportation system. The area will take advantage of an annual 200 million passenger flow brought by the Guangzhou South Railway, then build up a modern new town around the railway station.
In terms of industry, Guangzhou and Foshan have promoted exchanges in various fields such as automobile, medicine, and manufacturing. The number of industrial cooperation projects reached to 31 and 4,291 companies have achieved mutual investment.
Next, it will focus on the major areas of advanced equipment manufacturing, automobile, new-generation of information technology, bio-medicine and health, to establish a total of 30 industry platforms and several trillion RMB -level industrial clusters.