Cities have become more beautiful

2 min read

Decades ago, many of the county towns in Xinjiang could not be called”town”; the saying of”three street lamps on one road, one loudspeaker can be heard in the county”was not exaggerated at all. There were only rows of disgraced houses, dusty dirt roads, and blocks of small buildings of only three or four floors. The area where the small buildings were concentrated might be the most prosperous area of a county.

Wenquan County

But now, in the towns and cities in Xinjiang buildings scattered everywhere, as well as the large and small hotels. The clean and wide roads are crowded with people and vehicles, both sides of the asphalt road are the sidewalks covered with asphalt cement bricks, with trees and flowers waving in the wind. Infrastructure construction is all in readiness, and even the street lights and trash cans reveal a sense of design.

With the accelerating pace of urbanization cities in Xinjiang are becoming much greener. By the end of 2011, the green coverage ratio of the built up areas in Xinjiang had reached 33.9%, and the ratio of green space had reached 30.4%, with the park green land per capita of 9.54 square meters. Half of all the cities (counties) are garden cities in Xinjiang.

Urumqi, Karamay, and Shihezi did the best in urban landscaping work. 12 cities and counties, such as Shihezi City, Korla City, and Burqin County, were awarded the “National Garden City(town)”.

Six cities of Xinjiang were on the list of “Top 200 of 2012 China Special Charming Cities” jointly elected by Global Strategic Economic Development Committee, World Urban Research Society, Conference Board and other institutions. They are Urumqi, Karamay, Turpan, Ili, Korla and Hetian.