Nansha, Guangzhou, a place of tremendous changes
Recently, Nansha, Guangzhou held an urban work conference, with several newsworthy points that deserve attention.
First, this is the first urban work conference held in the name of the district committee in the history of Nansha, and it is also the first urban work conference at the district committee level across Guangzhou.
Second, a new roadmap for urban construction was unveiled simultaneously — the *Implementation Plan of Guangzhou Nansha District on Further Promoting the Improvement of Urban Quality*.
The goals are set directly to 2028, with four key words: Ocean City, Hub City, People's City, and Future City. The specific path is broken down into "Eight General Requirements + Ten Quality Improvement Actions".
Third, there is another important change: the 50-square-kilometer central urban area.
The Nansha government work report proposed earlier this year was still to "optimize and refine the 20-square-kilometer central urban area"; this conference proposed to "accelerate the construction of the 50-square-kilometer central urban area". Judging from public statements, the scale of Nansha's central urban area construction has expanded significantly.
Putting these signals together, they actually point to the same judgment: Nansha's urban development is entering a new stage. Let's take stock of the specific changes:
01
Continue building the city while starting to operate the city
Why did this change happen? To understand this matter, we must first look at the 2025 Central Urban Work Conference.
In 2025, the central government held the urban work conference again after a ten-year interval, making a key judgment: China's urbanization is shifting from a period of rapid growth to a period of stable development, and urban development is shifting from the stage of large-scale incremental expansion to the stage of stock quality improvement and efficiency enhancement.
For Nansha, there is a special point — it is not a mature urban area like Yuexiu or Liwan, but still a fast-growing new city: the hubs are still under construction, industries are still being introduced, the population is still increasing, and large areas of urban space still need to be continuously developed.
Therefore, what Nansha is facing is not a simple "shift from increment to stock", but a more complex problem: continue to build the city to expand the increment on one hand, and start to operate the city to focus on quality improvement and efficiency enhancement on the other hand.
Therefore, the conference repeatedly emphasized several concepts: grasp the development rhythm, concentrate resources, advance step by step; attach equal importance to both soft and hard facilities, and give equal weight to construction and management; invest in people and serve people.
The logic behind this is very clear: Nansha is moving from "building the city" to "operating the city well". The former relies on land, investment and infrastructure, while the latter relies on public services, space quality, commercial vitality and governance capacity.
02
Cities are not spread out, but gathered together
Nansha covers an area of more than 800 square kilometers, and one of its biggest challenges is that resources tend to be spread too thinly.
This conference clearly put forward: concentrate forces, highlight priorities, and concentrate resources to advance step by step. The core starting point is the 50-square-kilometer central urban area, while promoting the agglomeration of Qingsheng Hub, Nansha Bay, Nansha Hub and the southern Wanqingsha area, and all towns and sub-districts are emphasized to follow the principle of "one town with one unique feature".
At the same time, strengthen the style control of the "five edges" of mountain edge, water edge, forest edge, farmland edge and sea edge, shape the coastal urban feature of "city mirrored in mountains and seas, graceful water landscape of Lingnan", and further enhance the recognition of Nansha.
This means that Nansha no longer exerts equal efforts across its more than 800 square kilometers, but further concentrates funds, resources, population and public services in key areas, and first creates several high-quality spaces with a real urban vibe.
Cities are not spread out, but gathered together, and Nansha now puts more emphasis on this kind of "agglomeration".
03
Shift from "investing in objects" to "investing in people"
In the past, when talking about new districts, the most common terms were industrial parks, expressways, metros and office buildings. But this time Nansha used a very noteworthy expression: "invest in people and serve people". This corresponds to the change in population structure behind it. The conference disclosed that since 2025, Nansha has added 150,000 new permanent residents, 80,000 of whom are young people.
After the influx of young people, urban demand will naturally change, because what they need is not just jobs, but also a high-quality living atmosphere.
In response to this, Nansha proposed to "serve the young people with a young city". How to implement it specifically? This conference presented many detailed expressions: 15-minute convenient living circle, 15-minute industrial living circle, all-age-friendly society, housing for young talents, night economy, first-store, first-show and first-performance, as well as "ticket stub economy".
It even goes into details such as breakfast shops, wet markets, pocket parks, parking lots, sports fields; coffee culture week, beer culture festival, night economy; sailing boats, cruise ships, yachts, Ferris wheels; elderly canteens, childcare services, schools, hospitals, housing for young talents, and even property services are separately emphasized.
What does this indicate? The granularity of Nansha's urban governance is getting finer and finer, which is the inevitable embodiment of the concept of "invest in people and serve people".
04
From "the city in the strategy" to "the city in daily life"
In the past five years, Nansha's industry, transportation, and science and innovation platforms have developed rapidly.
The Nansha territorial space master plan approved in 2025 has positioned Nansha as a demonstration zone for comprehensive Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao cooperation, a national southern marine science and technology innovation center, and an international shipping hub.
In other words, the general framework of Nansha has become increasingly clear. The next more difficult step is to truly turn the city in the planning strategy into a city in daily life.
Therefore, I believe that the real signal released by this Nansha urban work conference can be condensed into one sentence: Nansha is moving from "building a new city" to "operating a city". It does not mean stopping road construction or building buildings, nor stopping incremental development, but investing more resources in people while continuing rapid construction.
For example, the 50-square-kilometer central urban area is to increase urban density, and the 15-minute convenient living circle is to improve life convenience, both of which make resources serve people more efficiently.
For another example, industrial communities solve the problem of separation between industry and daily life; Nansha Bay is built into a romantic harbor, with 50 kilometers of coastline and 100 kilometers of cycling routes connected, which introduces ecological resources into daily life; music festivals, tennis matches, lantern fairs and temple fairs inject "vibrant and down-to-earth life atmosphere" into the city.
These seem to be trivial matters, but isn't urban life made up of these trivial matters?
Ultimately, "city building" creates space, while "city operation" creates life. Thus, Nansha's development has officially entered a new stage: from large-scale development and construction to the simultaneous advancement of city building and city operation; from the pursuit of scale to the pursuit of quality; from investing in objects to investing in people.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Urban War", written by Sun Bushu's team, and authorized for release by 36Kr.