Eco-cities study planned

A US company and the China Society for Urban Studies (CSUS) will study environmentally friendly city construction for the next five years.

US-based United Technologies Corp (UTC) signed an agreement with CSUS to sponsor the five-year Eco-City Assessment and Best Practices Project.

The goal of the project is to create an index of eco-friendly construction to promote successful projects as potential blueprints to China's urban planners.

UTC will provide financial support for the program, although the company did not disclose how much it was investing in the program.

"It's one of our corporate social responsibility initiatives to inspire positive attention to green buildings and energy-saving and low-emission city and urban recycling," said Jim Gradoville, president of China operations for the Fortune 500 company.

CSUS is a research institute affiliated with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development.

For its role in the project, CSUS will organize an academic team to design the framework for the study, create an indexing system and evaluate the collected information.

China is in the midst of rapid urbanized development. Urbanization of the country is expected to reach 47 percent by 2010 and 56 percent to 58 percent by 2020, according to the National Plan for Urban and Town System Development formulated by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development.

With this rapid development will come serious challenges in creating environmentally sustainable urban centers.

Today, China's eco-city development model is still in its preliminary stage, and a gap exists between theoretical studies and practical applications, CSUS Secretary-General Li Xun said.

Little attention has been paid to developing a blueprint for environmentally friendly development based on an eco-city index, Li said.

The scientific index that will be used to study eco-city construction for the China project has five objectives:

To promote successful, progressive eco-city planning, construction and management of "green" cities;

To evaluate cities through case studies that highlight best practices;

To encourage city governments to implement green policies for urban construction;

To select and promote eco-city success stories to other urban areas;

To promote public awareness of eco-city developments and their value to society as a whole.

(China Daily 07/20/2009 page8)