The People’s Republic of China moved towards full cyberpunk-ification after urban planners in southern China laid out a monumentally ambitious — and expensive — plan to merge nine southern cities into a single mega-city, reported the Telegraph this Monday.

Under the “Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One” scheme, the cities of Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Shenzhen, Zhaoqing, Zhongshan, and Zhuhai would come together as a mega-city approximately 16,000 square miles large. The Telegraph estimates that the merged urban areas, twice the size of Wales, would have a combined population of 42 million. This would make it the world’s largest city both in terms of population and surface area.

Facilitating this plan will be the infrastructure improvements, especially in energy, water, telecommunications and public transportation. Around 150 projects related to the improvements will be executed over the next six years, at an estimated expense of 2 trillion yuan (US$304 billion)

3,100 miles of rail tracks across twenty-nine rail lines will be laid down to minimize journey time within the mega-city. An express rail will connect it with the bordering city-state of Hong Kong.

[via The Telegraph]

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