Trail park offers views, links districts in city

Twice a day, morning and evening, 73-year-old Qiu Xianzhu and 72-year-old Dai Yu take a two-hour stroll with their pet dog in Chongqing's Cliff Trail Park. The couple, both local retirees, recently moved into a nearby neighborhood.

"In the past, the site was a mess, all barren hills and slopes full of garbage. Now, it's a beautiful park," said Qiu, adding that he has noticed a sharp increase in visitors.

Recently, the Cliff Trail Park project, located in the city's Dadukou district, won gold at the Paris Design Awards 2022 in the International Environmental Design category.

A prestigious competition covering the disciplines of architecture, interior design, landscape design, graphic design and product design, the awards honor innovative thinkers from all over the world.

The park is named after a trail being planned along a cliff overlooking the cosmopolitan city and the Yangtze River. It will run for 22 kilometers, with a 6.3 km main section that is being built in two phases, the first of which has been completed. The park covers an area of 788,000 square meters.

The red and gray trail－which is designed for walking, jogging and cycling, and is wheelchair accessible along the main section－is one of 60 featured trails planned by the municipality. It begins in a residential area and zigzags along the cliff, running through parks and protected green spaces before culminating at the riverside. It is the first trail to be built on a cliffside in the city's central urban area.

In Chongqing, a mountainous city, walking was the main way most residents got around. Since ancient times, numerous trails and small roads that wind their way around the mountains have helped connect communities.

Nowadays, some have been transformed into sightseeing routes to let visitors experience the landscape and history of the city.

"The mountains, rivers and the 60-meter drop in the city's terrain present great creative inspiration," said project director Yang Jing of T Y Lin International, the company designing the park.

The park has made it so people no longer need to make a long detour from residential areas to reach the riverside, which is now accessible through several entrances.

"It connects the historic town, parks, a renovated industrial site and districts with 16 focal points and 22 entrances," according to the description on the Paris Design Awards 2022 website.

Specifically, it connects and combines parks and green areas, including the Chongqing Industrial Museum, Yidu Ancient Town, Yidu Park and Siyuan Park.

The trail runs through new and old areas.

It links the district's densely populated residential areas, an existing steel making site and tourist resources along the riverside together.

Notably, the project has also turned old bomb shelters into public reading places. A book cafe is expected to open in one of them.

The 1.5-km section built during the first phase of the project are already in use. The second phase is under construction and should open to the public later this year.

With green living becoming a prerequisite for future development, more efforts are needed to foster low-carbon methods of transportation. Recently, the Chongqing Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission unveiled a plan to promote walking, cycling and buses as the main modes of urban transportation during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period.