EU, China building better cities

Business partnerships are turning a rare opportunity into a blueprint for growth

The unprecedented growth of Chinese cities has opened up great opportunities for European businesses and institutions, which are now sharing with China their expertise and experience in making the growth of cities sustainable.

Contributing to such discussions are academics, city planners and architects who see China as a place of business opportunity as well as a testing ground for innovative ideas and solutions for sustainable cities.

This cross-pollination has led to improvements and wider adoption in such areas as low-carbon building and use of urban design to make transportation more efficient while improving quality of life.

On a government level, China and the European Union signed the EU-China Partnership on Sustainable Urbanization agreement in 2012, facilitating a range of meetings and discussions between government officials and businesses.

Another government-level initiative is the Mayor's Forum, which allows European mayors to talk about their experience in urban governance with their Chinese counterparts through regular face-to-face meetings.

Former European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso says that Europe's local governments have many important lessons to offer their Chinese counterparts. One example is their expertise in maintaining cities' uniqueness and diversity in the urbanization process, which he believes is a good approach for Chinese cities to follow.

Barroso says one example is the EU-China Sustainable Urbanization Park, now being built in Shenyang as a pilot project under the partnership. The park incorporates many European and Chinese products and designs to promote awareness of sustainable urbanization.

China and the EU also have jointly financed a four-year research project started in March 2011 that helps academics on both sides to jointly analyze solutions for China's urbanization challenges.

Known as UrbaChina, the project is jointly managed by a consortium of 11 Chinese and European research institutions, whose academics meet regularly to exchange ideas and share research.

Francois Gipouloux, research director of France's National Center for Scientific Research and coordinator of the UrbaChina project, says a strong comparative approach has been implemented in the group's research to encourage long-term cooperation between Europe and China's governments, academics and businesses.

"Although Europe and China have followed different urbanization paths, there is nonetheless room for mutual learning on important areas such as urban mobility, connectivity, innovation, environmental protection, or funding for infrastructure and services," Gipouloux says.

Progress also has come from an agreement that Britain signed with China in 2007 to foster business collaboration in sustainable urban development, energy savings, resource management and environmental protection called the UK-China Sustainable Cities Initiative.

Since its launch, many Chinese government delegations have visited the UK to learn more about the country's pioneering low-carbon construction projects, says Peter Millman, of UK Trade & Investment, and coordinator of the project.

Millman also takes delegations of British businesses with specialties in urban planning, architecture, engineering and other related sectors to discuss business opportunities in China twice a year. He says visits take place mostly in Wuhan, Changsha, Chongqing and Hangzhou, four Chinese cities that are the focus of the partnership agreement.

"This is not just us going in and doing the projects. It's more the case of finding Chinese partners, and staying in the China market for the long term. China's urbanization process provides huge opportunities, and we want to help China in the long term," Millman says.

UK firms, working with UKTI in China and in the UK, have already secured contracts worth over 40 million pounds ($61 million; 51 million euros) in 2014 to support China's sustainable urbanization programs.

Government initiatives aside, many private sectors and organizations are also expanding into China to help Chinese cities grow sustainably, especially city planning and architecture firms.

BDP, a British architecture firm, designed the Ecological and Technological New City master plan in Yangzhou. The development has secured premium prices because there is an increasingly savvy population that values the energy efficiency and low-carbon impact of these apartments, says Francis Glare, head of urbanism at BDP.

"The intention was to create a new, livable city center, with a focus on quality of life for residents. We placed large numbers of residential buildings within the center, alongside commercial workplaces, to limit the amount of travel between the two.

"We also considered the likely potential for economic development and worked with consultants to establish the basis for this, in order to ensure economic sustainability," says Glare.

BDP is also working with local governments in China to develop sustainable urban master plans. Glare says these plans integrate social, economic and physical aspects of urban development and sustainability into singular and exciting urban visions.

Meanwhile, Glare's team also participates in knowledge sharing schemes initiated at government levels on sustainable cities, such as the Manchester-Wuhan government initiative that shares and compares "smart city" experiences between the UK and China. Smart cities use digital technology to improve such areas as transportation, energy, water and waste service.

"The rapid rate of urbanization in China in recent years is creating highly connected smart-city infrastructures," Glare says. "Whilst in the UK, the emphasis on regeneration poses the challenges of retrofitting smart city infrastructures."

Space Syntax, a UK urban planning firm, launched a Beijing office in November 2013. The company provides architectural and urban planning services using technology built on theories of spatial layout and social behavior.

A few years ago it took part in a project to expand the central business district of Changchun in a sustainable way. Changchun's government asked a Beijing architecture company to help with the project, and the company then took on Space Syntax as an adviser.

"The city had planned to grow massively over the next few years, and there was the question of where the CBD should be, and indeed how many CBDs should exist," says Tim Stonor, managing director of Space Syntax.

"We realized that some of the original locations where the CBDs were planned were not ideal. Our Space Syntax analysis showed that they were not in the most accessible locations, where you would naturally tend to find them. We therefore suggested different locations, which were just slightly away from the locations in the original plan, and our suggestions led to a change."

This example, says Stonor, demonstrates the importance of academic, science-based research in solving practical problems. To encourage this process, his team is now providing training in Space Syntax techniques to many staff members and students in Chinese universities.

As China rapidly grows, Stonor says, it is important that its architects and urban planners remember to look to history, which demonstrates how human beings and landscapes interact naturally.

Yang Wei, managing director of her own firm, Wei Yang and Partners, is participating in the introduction of new ideas. The London-based company specializes in urban design and master planning. She says she believes sustainable cities are places where their citizens have a sense of belonging, feel happy and benefit from convenience.

"The cities should have distinctive natural beauty and strong local culture, and the cities' local economies should have the ability to adapt to future changes," Yang says.

Yang's company is working on a project known as 21st Century Garden Cities in China, which adapts garden city principles to Chinese urban-rural development. The garden city movement is a method of urban planning initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the UK. Garden cities are self-contained communities surrounded by greenbelts containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and agriculture.

One of the company's garden city master planning contracts in China is the Historical Yellow River Corridor Urban-Rural Integrated Master Plan in Sui Ning County. It was signed in Beijing during the visit of UK Prime Minister David Cameron to China in December 2013.

As part of the commission, Wei Yang & Partners applied updated garden city principles and the UK's spatial planning expertise to help Sui Ning develop an integrated strategy for accommodating urban-rural balanced growth.

Contact the writers through cecily.liu@chinadaily.com.cn