New | China vows to make its crowded, chaotic cities safer and better

China’s leadership pledged on Tuesday to make the country’s cities better and safer to live in, as the top officials wrapped up a two-day urban works conference amid rescue efforts in Shenzhen after Sunday’s deadly landslide.

In the first urban works gathering since 1978, the top Communist Party cadres, headed by President Xi Jinping (習近平), reflected on China’s urbanisation over the past few decades.

READ MORE: China’s leaders meet to map plans for the economy – and the country’s cities

“We must push forward new urbanisation centred on the people ... to effectively solve various ‘urban diseases’,” Xinhua said in a statement summarising the decisions made at the meeting.

The mainland has gained some 600 million urban residents in the past 30 years from the “greatest and fastest” urbanisation process in the history of mankind. But many cities are polluted, crowded and dangerous.

Beijing is one of many cities that has seen rapid urbanisation, with its population now at 21 million from 8.5 million in 1978. Numerous buildings have sprouted up across the capital over the years and, as the city grows increasingly crowded, local authorities have started moving some facilities out of the city centre.

The conference vowed to make safety the “first priority” in urban management. Safety awareness should be key in every aspect of urban work, it said.

Renovation of run-down urban areas would be completed by 2020, on top of raising construction standards and quality, the Xinhua statement said.