An international visitor takes photos at Hongya Cave, a popular tourist attraction in Yuzhong District, southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality. (Photo/Xie Zhiqiang)
Chongqing - Chongqing’s mountainous terrain and layered cityscape have made it highly recognizable worldwide. But the same geography limits developable land, especially in its dense urban core, where aging infrastructure and industrial upgrading add further pressure.
Home to Hongya Cave, Raffles City and many of Chongqing’s best-known attractions, Yuzhong District is the city’s historic urban core and a major gateway for international visitors. Yet within its 23.24 square kilometers, almost no land remains for new development.
Instead of expanding outward, the district is seeking growth by making better use of existing space, moving industries up the value chain and improving the urban experience.
In 2025, Yuzhong’s producer services sector generated 95.23 billion yuan (14.11 billion U.S. dollars) in added value, accounting for 53.5% of its GDP. In H1 2026, 84% of Chongqing’s inbound overnight visitors stayed in Yuzhong. The highly built-up district is finding new room for growth within its existing boundaries.
For a mountain city, connectivity is a major challenge. At one popular tourist area in Chongqing, a height difference of about 40 meters separates an upper street from a riverside road. During holidays, large crowds once had to move through narrow routes, while dense surrounding development left little room for major new transport facilities.
The solution was not large-scale demolition, but better use of leftover space. Small plots and nearby idle land were combined to build vertical elevators, a parking garage exit and viewing platforms. A former traffic bottleneck became a three-dimensional connection between different elevations and a new public space.
Land that is not yet ready for permanent development is also being put to temporary use, including EV charging stations and small parking lots.
Yuzhong offers a lesson for land-scarce cities worldwide. By connecting spaces vertically, reusing buildings and combining fragmented plots, it generated 2.575 billion yuan in land transfer revenue in 2025 without relying on new land.
Growth here is shifting from using more land to creating more value, with finance, professional services, supply chain management and the digital economy gaining importance.
Traditional businesses are also upgrading. Chongqing Department Store, a major homegrown retailer, has brought in strategic partners and rebuilt its digital supply chain. It is moving beyond traditional retail toward supply chain management and headquarters operations, with greater emphasis on branding, management and resource allocation.
Digital technology is further reducing dependence on physical space. A medical imaging cloud developed in the district now connects 1,243 medical institutions and contains more than 66 million medical imaging records. Artificial intelligence is also being applied in architectural design and industrial production.
Chongqing has also connected remote computing resources thousands of kilometers away to its central urban area, providing computing power for local digital industries.
For a district with little land left for new development, the growth model is shifting from using more space to generating more value from every square meter.
How can an old city modernize without becoming a museum? In Luzumiao, buildings dating from the 1920s to the 1970s have been renewed without erasing the neighborhood’s original layout or businesses, while new cafés, restaurants and cultural venues keep its history alive in daily life.
The revival is spreading across old streets, former shopping centers and hillside paths. Historic buildings now host cultural spaces, vacant commercial properties attract younger crowds, and mountain walkways connect sightseeing with leisure and nightlife.
Yuzhong is now home to 682 first stores and brand debuts, as well as 125 independent concept stores, bringing new forms of consumption into old urban spaces.
The changing urban experience is also strengthening Chongqing’s appeal to international visitors. In the first half of 2026, Yuzhong received 543,000 inbound overnight visitors, up 81.9% year on year. More than 80% of all inbound overnight visitors to Chongqing chose to stay in the district.