Smart Governance for Mega-City Challenges: A Coordinated Approach to Beijing’s “Big City Disease” under the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Strategy

Abstract

As one of China’s national mega-cities, Beijing faces intensifying “big city diseases” characterized by overpopulation, traffic congestion, environmental degradation, and regional development imbalance. This paper adopts a “problem identification–cause analysis–dynamic linkage–strategy proposal” framework to systematically diagnose the root causes of Beijing’s urban governance challenges and proposes intelligent, regionally coordinated governance pathways. Key innovations include shifting the governance focus from traditional urban planning to population and mobility management, promoting cross-regional functional dispersal through “urban cluster unit” thinking, and integrating policy and market mechanisms to enhance the attractiveness of sub-centers. Through empirical data, comparative international cases (Tokyo, Paris, Shanghai), and dynamic interaction modeling, the paper reveals that the crux of Beijing’s “Big City Disease” lies in the vicious feedback loops formed among population pressure, infrastructural constraints, and environmental limitations. The study concludes by recommending a smart governance framework centered on big data-driven population regulation, rail-transit-oriented spatial coordination, and industrial synergy under the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei collaborative development strategy. These findings offer theoretical contributions and practical insights for other mega-cities facing similar systemic challenges.