A Chinese Urban Experiment. Strolling along sidewalks shaded by plane trees, one might take Tianjin Eco-City for just another of the many residential areas sprouting up all over China. But on closer inspection, this place is different. The roadside trash cans are covered with solar photovoltaic panels so they can light up at night; free electric buses connect different districts; the drainage wells for storm water are all embedded in the curbs. There are less obvious features, too. The pavement is laid with pervious sand bricks for efficient drainage, and the water supply is designed to minimize leakage. Rainwater and wastewater are collected separately, and 18 submersible axial flow pumps capable of pumping 42.1 cubic meters of water per second divert the rainwater to artificial wetlands.
Here, on a piece of land about one-half the size of Manhattan, is one of China’s first attempts at sustainable urban development. . $6.5 billion Investment in Eco-City infrastructure. Hong Kong's hidden rooftop slums. Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization. The joint report by the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China’s State Council, Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanization, includes six priority areas for a new model of urbanization: 1. Reforming land management and institutions Because most of the urban expansion in recent years was on converted rural land, the report says currently the amount of farmland available is close to the “red line” of 120 million hectares, which is considered to be the minimum necessary to ensure food security.More efficient use of land will require stronger property rights for farmers, higher compensation for land requisition, new mechanisms for converting rural construction land to urban uses, and market-driven pricing for urban land allocation.Legal limits should be set up on rural land taken for public purposes by local governments. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Chinese Anger Over Pollution Becomes Main Cause of Social Unrest. Pollution has replaced land disputes as the main cause of social unrest in China, a retired Communist Party official said, as delegates to the country’s legislature lamented environmental degradation. China now sees 30,000 to 50,000 so-called mass incidents every year, Chen Jiping, a former leading member of the party’s Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs, said yesterday. Increased use of mobile phones and the Internet has allowed protesters to show their anger more effectively, he said. “The major reason for mass incidents is the environment, and everyone cares about it now,” Chen told reporters at a meeting of the Chinese People’s Political and Consultative Conference, where he’s a member.
“If you want to build a plant, and if the plant may cause cancer, how can people remain calm?” FULL COVERAGE: China's National People's Congress Old Ways Concern over the environment has led to a series of confrontations between local governments and residents in the past year. Heavy Price. How Chinese Urbanism Is Transforming African Cities - Point of View - July 2014. The METROPOLIS Blog Justin Zhuang The Great Wall Apartments, a Chinese style residential compound in Nairobi, Kenya All photos courtesy Go West Project The factory of the world has a new export: urbanism. Or so says Dutch research studio Go West Project , who have been tracking this phenomenon for their on-going project about the export of the Chinese urban model to Africa.
According to the duo, China’s growing economic and political might have made them a significant player in the continent. The Lekki Free Zone (LFZ), a collaboration between a Chinese company and the Lagos government While many Africans appreciate this much-needed development, it is not without its problems, says Roggeven. “On the one hand, China is able to deliver projects, within budget and on time and propels urban development forward.
The LFZ, currently beginning construction, was planned in China. And the impact of Chinese development in Africa is only growing bigger. (Re)Made in China: The Soviet-Era Planning Projects Shaping China’s Cities. The following article, written by Jacob Dreyer and originally published in The Calvert Journal as “Maximum city: the vast urban planning projects of Soviet-era Russia are being reborn in modern China,” analyzes a fascinating phenomenon: the exportation of Soviet urbanism — or rather Stalinist urbanism — shaping Chinese cities today. As I cycled to work on 20 May this year, the Yan’an Expressway — Shanghai’s crosstown artery, named after the utopian socialist city that was Mao Zedong’s 1940s stronghold — was eerily silent, cordoned off for a visit by President Vladimir Putin.
We discovered the next day that the upshot of his visit was the signing a $400bn contract with China for the export of gas and petroleum. As President Barack Obama had once promised he would, Putin made a pivot to Asia, albeit on a slightly different axis. What is more, not only is the prevalence of the Soviet, centrally planned model of urbanism unarguable, it is to be welcomed.