Modern luxury residential buildings stand lakeside in Foshan, in the Chinese province of Guangdong.

In British sci-fi comic 2000 AD, Mega City One spread across the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, with a population of 800 million kept under the thumb of harsh lawman Judge Dredd. Today, on China’s southern coast, the integration of the Greater Pearl River Delta (PRD) is turning fiction into fact (sans the harsh lawman), with 11 cities linking to create an urban area of 21,100 square miles (55,000 sq km) and a population of up to 80 million.

The nine cities of the PRD, plus the special administrative zones of Hong Kong and Macau, are becoming increasingly linked by a series of bridges, tunnels, roads, and high-speed rail networks. Today they have a total official population of 60 million, but the actual number is believed to be far higher once unregistered migrants are taken into account.

By 2030, these 11 separate cities will be part of a single urban area with a population that could be as high as 80 million and a gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $2 trillion, according to Michael Enright, director of Enright, Scott & Associates, who spoke at the ULI Asia Pacific Summit, held in Hong Kong in May....Continue Reading

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