Cyberpunk Now

While Shanghai and Hong Kong get the lion’s share of attention, in part because of how visually striking they are, it’s not a surprise that Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a futuristic Shanghai as one of the settings that the player will visit.

But Hong Kong isn’t the only city in the Pearl River Delta. Adjacent is the Shenzhen special economic zone and just up the river is the capital of Guangdong province and one of China’s five National Central Cities. But more than that, there are now plans to create the largest mega city in the world.

The “Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One” scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales.
The new mega-city will cover a large part of China’s manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.

Interestingly, the merger of these cities is less about centralization, but more about linking these areas together and spreading industry and population through the delta.

However, [Ma Xiangming] said no name had been chosen for the area. “It will not be like Greater London or Greater Tokyo because there is no one city at the heart of this megalopolis,” he said. “We cannot just name it after one of the existing cities.”