Utopia rising

Imagine this. Wildlife grazing and romping in green glades filled with birdsong. People working at home or in business parks to which they can stroll or cycle. And residents need only a three-minute walk to reach a park wherever they live.

It's not a description for a utopia but the blueprint for Wanzhuang, one of China's first planned eco-city developments.

In September 2005, Chinese President Hu Jintao paid a visit to the United Kingdom, during which a series of agreements were signed; among them is a deal between Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporate (SIIC) and UK-based Arup to transform Dongtan in Shanghai into China's first eco-city. And now they have begun a second project in Wanzhuang, northwest of the prefecture level city of Langfang and an important junction connecting Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

With an area of 80 sq km, Wanzhuang has 15 existing villages that are home to 100,000 people. According to Peter Head, director of Arup, the proposal is to create jobs, homes and services for up to 330,000 people in the area, taking advantage of the area's strategic location between Beijing and Tianjin.

"The start-up area, also the demonstration area, covers 1.67 sq km with a floor space of 1.3 million sq m and a plot ration of 0.78. And the construction will begin in 2008 and will be completed in 2012," says Head.

In fact, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region faces huge challenges for environmental protection and energy savings. Its per-capita water resources are 10 percent lower than the national average. Meanwhile, in 2006, Hebei and Tianjin failed to fulfill their target of reducing unit-GDP energy consumption by 4 percent, making the objective of a 20 percent decrease in unit-GDP in the 11th Five-year Plan (2006-10) very difficult to achieve.

But the Wanzhuang eco-city is an attempt to realize the goal.

The final plan calls for 60 parks, located in two central and two peripheral green belts. If realized, the per capita open space will reach 23 sq m, far exceeding the minimum area of 8 sq m suggested by World Health Organization (WHO). There will be a park within 240 meters of each living space that will also serve as a community center where people can enjoy both leisure and organized cultural activities.

But "green" is not the only goal for Wanzhuang. Convenient traffic, sound networks and culture conservation all embody a holistic vision of an eco-friendly modern city. For instance, people's average shopping outings might be less than 10 km and primary schools will be within 500 m of nearby residential buildings.

Though it is hard to have a standard definition of "ecological city", the term dates back to the 1970s when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proposed it in the process of researching the "People and Ecosphere Plan." It is generally considered to include a holistic mix of social, economic, cultural and natural areas combining efficient uses of material, energy and information.

Building such cities has become urgent for China after the government said in a report four years ago that pollution has resulted in economic losses of 1.08 trillion yuan in 2004, and dragged the GDP by 3 percent.

Besides the cooperation between China and UK on building eco-cities, China has also partnered with Singapore on similar projects in Tianjin.

"China is at a turning point of its development. The eco-city emerges as a new paradigm that can guide the country in making substantial progress along the most pressing economic, social and ecological issues," says Thierry Delmarcelle, managing director of Monitor Group (Beijing). "The choice that China makes in designing cities today will affect the well-being of this and future generations."

According to Delmarcelle, several axis' can guide the planning of future cities across the country.

One centers on the use of energy-saving and environmental friendly products, technologies, and concepts in every aspect of a city design. These include, but are not limited to, green buildings, renewable energy, low pollution vehicles, improved waste management and recycling.

Mixed residential and business areas could also be solutions that encourage local employment, decrease the need for mass transportation and therefore vehicle pollution, and reduce the amount of money that is locked up in hugely expansive infrastructure projects.

Another axis is the use of urban planning concepts that promote mixed-income neighborhoods that provide housing of different types and price levels which can stimulate interactions between people from different social strata - rich and poor, blue and white collar - providing a more dynamic and diversified texture to the city. And extension of this idea would be to include urban planners in promoting the social and economic progress of rural areas and achieving urban-rural integration.

(China Daily 07/07/2008 page5)