'Oasis' plan for disused airport land

Slides
Photos

By Liang Qiwen (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-17 07:39

Disused land once home to Guangzhou's airport is to be developed into a leisure and culture "oasis", it was announced yesterday.

The 9.22-sq-km area, which is valued at more than 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion), has stood empty since the airport moved to the Huadu district in 2004.

But the urban planning bureau for the Guangdong provincial capital this week unveiled a 1-billion-yuan plan to build new parks, office buildings and cultural centers, and rename it Baiyun New Town, said the project's chief engineer Ye Haojun yesterday.

The scheme will be completed before Guangzhou hosts the Asian Games next year, while most of the cash is to be spent on infrastructure construction, he said.

"Greenery will be the most important characteristic of the new town," Ye said, while the blueprint, which was released on Wednesday, showed more than 40 percent of the area will be covered by trees and grass.

"People will be able to reach any park by walking just 500 m in the new town," he said. "It will become the oasis of Guangzhou."

The biggest feature will be Baiyun Park, which will cover an area of 30 hectares and dominate the center of the new town. It will also be connected with a subway station to create an easy transit channel between other areas of the project.

In the blueprint, the long and narrow new town will be divided by the original airport runway and will have two centers, one each in the north and the south.

The north will be a cultural center consisting of convention halls, sports stadiums, museums and art galleries, while the commercial center, offering shopping malls and hotels, will be in the south.

The original terminal building will also be reconstructed into a shopping mall, a park and a museum, which will feature the history and culture of Guangzhou's airport, Ye said.

Six residential communities for around 240,000 people will be built, covering more than 60 percent of the area, added Lu Chuanting, a designer of the blueprint.

The plan also includes post offices, hospitals and supermarkets.

"The communities currently surrounding the land are very disordered and have very few cultural facilities," explained Huang Xiaohong, a woman living near the land.

She said she hoped the new town will improve the locals' quality of life in the future.

(For more biz stories, please visit Industries)