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Work to start soon on Chinese eco city

Posted: 10/09/2007

China's first 'eco city', at Dongtan, is due to commence construction in early 2008. There are also plans for four other new green towns, according to engineering firm Arup, who are overseeing the developments.

At Dongtan, to be built on an island outside Shanghai, all energy will be renewable, no conventionally fuelled cars will be permitted and farms will grow organic vegetables for local consumption.

The first wave of residents and staff for a sustainable development institute should be able to move into the project by the end of the decade.

Eventually the island should house 400,000, people, linked to Shanghai with a road and metro line along a massive bridge and tunnel, although it is not designed as a greener commuter suburb, but a place where people can live and work, because travelling creates resource depletion, according to a spokesman.

The company also expects to start construction within 6 months to a year on Langfang, a sustainable town in Hebei province, which surrounds capital Beijing and is packed with polluting industry and plagued by water shortages. Langfang is said to be more typical of regeneration and development projects in China than Dongtan.

Half way between Beijing and the port city of Tianjin, the area is home to around 100,000 people in a cluster of villages, but the eco-city will be home to 400,000.

Often, as rural areas in China develop, old streets and homes are cleared away and an infrastructure grid laid out for businesses and home to fill in. The Langfang project, funded by both public and private money, will instead keep the footprint of the current villages, separated by pear orchards and poplar groves and connected by buses or trams and cycle paths.

Waste water from the city will be cleaned to use in irrigation, and organic waste will be converted into compost, to help boost the rural economy as the city develops.

Arup is also working on plans for projects near Jinan, capital of coastal Shandong province, the historic city of Suzhou and in a small town on a canal outside Shanghai.

Green Building Press  
 

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