In the past few years, i've been on wuhan's city line, and i've been asked, "wuhan's gonna annex o'choose?", "will you join hyo-sensei, huangoka, and become a super-man?"
Every time i hear a question like this, another picture comes out of my head: the metro is squeezing into a banging mouth, a parking lot, wuchang north-china road, and an alley in the old neighborhoods of the riverbank where people barely cross the road。
To be honest, if wuhan is really going to follow this line of “empowerment by annexation”, most of the time, he is trying to block himself。
In the 2026 national spatial plan and the 15th development course, the answer is clear: instead of “showing muscles” and “upgrading internal work”; rather than delineating, the city will live on this game。
The key sentence is: wuhan has no need to annex any city。
How far will this city go in the next decade and 20 years。
Let's start with shiniya。
My impression of shiniya was only plain: there were many young people, and there was a lot of noise at night. On the side of gwangiya square, the delivery boy was able to run his leg one night, and the entrance to the subway was full of students and programmers carrying computer bags。
At the time, many people called it "the eastern suburbs." and i went over there for a couple of years, and i clearly felt a word: changed。
You're standing near east lake science city, looking up, writing names upstairs, one more than a "hard core": optical electrons, artificial intelligence, biomedicine, chip manufacturing, large numbers of research and development centres, headquarters bases, graduate students, reporting with boxes, no worries at all。
I met a young man who graduated from wako and took coffee and said to me, "i don't really have to leave guangya, where i can study, find work, get married, buy a house, give birth, and have a baby." his wife worked as a doctor at the guangya hospital, and the children went to a nearby branch school, where they took the subway, three stations and five stops。
That's the bottom line: it's not just an industrial park, but a complete urban unit。
The metro network has become denser, and the sancha hospital has begun to set up, with the complex, the mall, and the conjoined apartments. You go to the lab for scientific research during the day, walk down the stairs at night and watch movies, and measure them with your feet。
More crucially, it has been clearly written in the planning: guangya is not a “subsidiary” to wuchang, but a new urban heart in the east, which in turn gives blood to the main city。
High-end talent, high-paying jobs, and creative resources are all gathered here. Those who want to come to wuhan in the future have a good chance not to squeeze into the old business circles of jianghan, but to throw their resumes first into guangya。
Ask wuhan what the amount of gold is, the brightest piece of gold。
And to the north, it's the large area that was once “too far” by a lot of wuhan。
In the mouths of many old citizens, there is a little "suburban feeling". But if you spread out a traffic map and circle a few key hubs, you'll find a very interesting fact: wuhan's most valuable base card, it's all here。
Sky river airport has been expanding, runways have been upgraded, and air- and metal-borne connections have been improving. You look up in the terminal at the information screens, the routes that fly out and in, not just tourists, but goods, people, money flows。
It's a deep-water port, a large port in the middle of the yangtze river, the word “to the river and the sea”, and it's not until the map is painted. Containers go down one boat, directly linked to long triangles and coastal ports。
This is the case in the north of wuhan, where the whole of the central region is truly able to organize the “four hong kongs”。
The pace of projects in the zone has been fast, with air logistics, cross-border trade, high-end manufacturing and network security, and you enter any park here, where the factory is located for distant “lifting, delivering” businesses, and traffic is directly taxed and employed。
Next to the yangtze district, the strategic new district at the national level, is located mainly in hong kong, liang kobong, and in the city。
One time i went to film a model area, and the local planners pointed at a large area of flat land and said to me, "in ten years' time, you'll come back and the antenna north of wuhan will be another way."
Many wuhan now have the impression that the north is still “outside, peri-urban”, but on the chessboard of the city as a whole, the role of the north has changed: it is no longer the “back garden” but the door to the outside world。
Where are the new people going? The old city can't get out. The north can get it; the city needs a little more outward-oriented economy? The port and the airport are on top. A “battle”, slowly becoming a “face”。
After the words “high-precision” and “portal”, it was the turn of the “pressure rock”。
By the opening area, the more familiar name is the valley。
I was the first to interview the valley, full of the walls and billboards of the garage, and the “place where the car was built” was its most visible label at that time. But now the factory is still a factory, and the industrial content has been changed quietly to another version。
Traditional fuel trucks are no longer the only actors, and new energy vehicles, smart grids, robots, energy reserves, high-end equipment have been laid out. The conglomerates are being expanded to include a chain of industries ranging from research and development, parts and components, to the whole car, to the back of services and logistics。
Unlike the technologists in shiniya, the valley absorbs another person: skilled workers, engineers, industrial workers, equipment maintenance, testing... These positions are not bright, but they are stable and solid, and as long as the factory machine continues, the job is steady。
You have to look at the shape of the real economy and go to the valley and look at a few brochures。
More interestingly, the valley is also in the wall。
The new city of mount mount has been rising rapidly in the past few years, with large areas of land being reprogrammed, the metro line coming this way, the school space coming this way, and the eco-park coming together. Before this, many people's first reaction was “manufacturing and dusty”; now many buyers would say, “there's a good price and the environment is better.”
I was there interviewing a couple working in the main shop, both of them in the nearby factory, and the children were studying at the new school in new city. They counted: the pressure would double if they went back to the old city of hanguchi, where they lived at a modest salary level, had a good house price and had a commuting time of less than half an hour。
"we are the ones who were kept in the valley." the man smiled and said, "how big is the city going to be, there's a place for ordinary people to live."
This plate is not a blood transfusion in the old city, but a chain of its own, linked to the workshop, and is constantly pumping people into the city. For wuhan, this is a real “basic disk”。
By putting together the three pieces of light valley, the northern hub and the valley, wuhan's “expanding truth” came out。
The outside world likes to ask, "whether you want to annex the oasis?" these questions sound exciting, but they are quite far from ordinary people's lives. The administrative boundaries are drawn in such a way as to involve finance, social security, people's lives and the whole body。
It's much simpler to look at the path of growth from within:
To the east, to help wuhan take the future industry and talent, and to take the city up
(b) the north airport and the yangtze region, torn open wuhan's portal and the flow of goods
In the south-west valley, a solid manufacturing chain is used to stabilize the employment chassis so that “the factory is not seen only in the writing building”。
The old town no longer stood alone against all the pressure, but turned into a pyrotechnic base。
Where will the hundreds of thousands of new wuhans go in the next five years? Most likely, it is not you who are no longer familiar with jiang han road or seji, but some community or park in these new cities。
Working late late at night in the xinjiang laboratory, people were staring at a shipment of containers in the north and listening to machine food by the production line in the valley. The choice of these people is to draw out a little bit of the outline of the new wuhan。
The most obvious thing for a person like me who has been looking at urban change for a long time is that wuhan is no longer worried about “is it big enough on the map” and is starting to care more about “can he grow on his own”。
Instead of annexing others to raise themselves, they dig deep, make the industry thick and leave people behind。
This is the real expansion of the great wuhan。
You? If you had a chance to re-select the city, would you have chosen the old town's fireworks, the kobaku valley's science, the northern portal, or chao valley's industry? You can say in the comment section, what's the look of the future warrior in your heart。
