The Department of Natural Resources of Guangdong Province recently released the Guangdong Metropolitan Areas Spatial Planning Coordination Guidelines, which proposed the idea of comprehensively classifying the scope of each metropolitan area according to such factors as population, land and administrative governance.

According to the guidelines, the Pearl River West Metropolitan Area refers to the metropolitan area on the west bank of the Pearl River Estuary, including Zhuhai, Zhongshan and Jiangmen. The Guangzhou Metropolitan Area includes Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhaoqing's Duanzhou District, Dinghu District, Gaoyao District and Sihui City, Qingyuan's Qingcheng District, Qingxin District and Fogang County. The Shenzhen Metropolitan Area includes Shenzhen (and the Shenzhen-Shanwei Special Cooperation Zone), Dongguan and Huizhou's Huicheng District, Huiyang District, Huidong County and Boluo County. The Shantou-Chaozhou-Jieyang Metropolitan Area includes Shantou, Chaozhou and Jieyang. The Zhanjiang-Maoming Metropolitan Area includes Zhanjiang and Maoming.

The guidelines put forward the establishment of three core development zones in the Pearl River West Metropolitan Areas, namely Downtown Zhongshan (including Torch Development Zone and Tsuihang New District), Downtown Jiangmen (including Jiangmen High-tech Zone), and Zhuhai Gaolan Port and Jiangmen Yinhu Bay.

Plans also include developing Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Jiangmen among major cities along with industrial platforms and building the Hezhou Municipal Center in Zhuhai to boost regional competition and cooperation.

It is also proposed that an integrated development axis between the east and west banks of the Pearl River will be built basing on such traffic projects as the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge, Shenzhen-Zhuhai Passage and Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge.