Wu Guangqiang

    THE dazzling urban expansion is putting cities to the real test of fire and water. On Nov. 15, a raging blaze engulfed a teachers’ apartment building under repair in Shanghai, claiming 58 innocent lives and injuring more than 70. On Nov. 11, main water pipes burst in Zhengzhou, capital city of Henan Province, flooding a massive area and leaving some 800,000 people without water.

    The two latest incidents are only the tip of the iceberg of accumulating risks as a result of runaway urbanization. Urbanization itself is not the culprit. The ones to blame are the pace, which is too fast, and the scale, which is too massive, for any city not to go amiss. If it is an impossible mission for an advanced city like Shanghai to put out an initially small fire on a 20-plus-story building without casualties, what about other less-developed cities? Witnessing the incapability of Shanghai’s fire department in the face of a major fire, our previous confidence in its well-trained personnel and sophisticated equipment was shattered. Neither is Shenzhen any safer.

    Shenzhen is said to possess over 6,300 high-rise buildings, of which 64 are over 100 meters. Believe it or not, however, according to the Shenzhen fire brigade, the highest reach of an aerial fire ladder in Shenzhen is a height of only 54 meters, namely that of a 20-story building. So it is fairly logical to anticipate that should any of the skyscrapers catch fire, we could do little but watch it burn to ashes — unless all high-rises are equipped with an adequate number of automatic extinguishers. Shanghai’s tragedy has already proved that idea an illusion. Shenzheners won’t forget the deadly fire at Wuwang Club on Sept. 20, 2008, in which 44 people died.

    Extreme accidents like a blaze aside, many negative consequences of radical city development are emerging and bringing more suffering than enjoyment to urban dwellers. Zhengzhou’s burst water pipes were unavoidable and this is set to occur again because the pipe network was constructed in 1976 and has long been outpaced by the increased volume of water use.

    A strong desire pressing Chinese city planners is to create modern cities as large as possible in the shortest time possible. As a result, megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou look increasingly more identical with gridlocked traffic, crowded buildings and choking pollution.

    Behind the glittering skyscrapers are arrays of unsolvable problems like traffic congestion, waste disposal and pollution. Some low-lying areas of Shenzhen have been plagued with flooding whenever heavy rains strike. Shenzhen’s traffic will come to a halt if the number of vehicles continues to increase at the current rate.

    The sustainability of such a pattern of urban growth is questionable. Painful lessons like those of “The Great Leap Forward” of the 1950s should never be forgotten. As the saying goes, zeal without knowledge is the sister of folly.

    (The author is an English tutor and a freelance writer.)