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I. Introduction

In the next couple of decades, projections suggest that the number of urban Chinese residents will likely grow by an amount equal to the entire current population of the United States, about 300 million people. Cities will have to grow to absorb this massive influx of new urban residents, and how they expand will profound implications for the need for personal automobiles and demand for oil to power those vehicles.

The cities could expand in ways that minimize transportation oil use. These cities would be high density, have close-by options for employment and entertainment, and offer high accessibility to transit. Using the language of Western planners, these cities would demonstrate "smart growth" and "transit-oriented development" (TOD).

Yet these cities could also grow in sprawling ways that essentially require extensive private vehicle use. The United States, for instance, has many of these sprawling cities unfriendly to public transportation including Atlanta and Houston. As is the case in these cities, once they are set up in sprawling ways, it is very difficult to go back and substantially alter them to make them more conducive to public transportation.

This paper estimates the potential oil savings if Chinese cities are built in ways that encourage smart growth and TOD and are able to maintain city density at 2010 levels. If China can keep the density of its cities constant, it can realize savings of 270,000-590,000 b/d in 2020 and 1.2-2.3 million b/d in 2035. The paper surveys the degree to which the Chinese government has historically supported and is currently promoting goals and policies with goals of smart growth and TOD, the barriers to implementation of these policies, and evidence of whether cities have been sprawling. The last section looks forward to see if the historical trends might change over the next couple of decades as Chinese cities continue to grow.

Since the economic reforms of 1978, the central government has not specifically promoted smart growth or TOD. Some of its policies correspond with smart growth principles, while some do not. Policies that could limit city sprawl have been undermined by local governments eager to raise revenue by leasing land to developers. Widespread decentralization of power in China makes it difficult for the central government to control the growth of cities. Macro-level data are spotty but indicate, along with more qualitative reports, that cities in China have become less dense. That cities have become less dense is consistent with what is expected as countries become wealthier. However, infrastructure spending on public transportation has picked up in recent years, a trend that is likely to continue.

Though the central government has historically made little or no sustained effort to encourage smart growth, there are hints that plans designed to limit the amount of land useable for cities or the design of cities themselves will be enforced or at least encourage in the future. Concerns about food security will keep weighing on Chinese leaders and could get them to finally adhere to their own goals for farmland preservation, which would limit the sprawl of cities. As for the actual plans concerning the design of cities themselves, statements in the most recent 12^th 5-Year Plan (5YP) suggest that promoting high -density development in existing cities is now seen as desirable/ Some other rhetoric promoting "low carbon cities" and recent programs that facilitate international collaboration and education also suggest that cities could grow in ways consistent with smart growth in the future. With support in the 12^th 5YP and support at many levels of government, public transportation infrastructure spending will likely continue to increase, barring any more accidents or scandals with rail.

But it is still very possible that cities in China will keep expanding and becoming less dense, reducing available farmland as they grow. There is no concerted yet to change the incentive structure for local governments, who are desperate to lease land for developers because they lack sufficient ability to raise tax revenue. Leaders think about more immediate concerns than the impact of smart growth on future oil use, and the change in rhetoric has occurred very recently. Only with public transportation it is possible to be relatively confident that spending and interest in expanding city bus and rail networks will continue, given traffic and pollution problems and the very visible nature of the projects.

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