Mapping China: Urbanisation - 6 Urban Ecology: Low-Carbon City Planning

‘Low-Carbon’ and ‘Zero-Carbon’ have become trendy titles for the planning of new towns, resulting from a rising awareness of climate change and global warming. Locations thus identified are designed as places to nurture new architectural technology and urban management ideas in order to serve the concept of a self-sustaining and human-friendly urban ecology. But are these trendy names practical targets or are they merely used as a marketing instrument? That is a big question mark now, after years of planning efforts and billions of dollars have been poured into these places without bringing about satisfying results.

Two of the most infamous low-carbon urban planning projects in China are Caofeidian New Town in Tangshan and Dongtan Eco-City in Shanghai. The world’s top architects and planners were invited to take part in design competitions and they laid out beautiful plans for these new towns.

Caofeidian is an artificially reclaimed island located in the Bohai Rim. The island is 200 kilometres from Beijing, and was a listed pilot area for the development of a ‘Recyclable/Circular Economy’ in China in 2005. Much attention was paid to the construction of the city’s infrastructure and less consideration was given to how the place was going to evolve into a liveable city. China’s energy giants, such as Huadian Power and PetroChina, located some of their energy bases there. An international forum was held in Caofeidian in 2009 to discuss the town’s future orientation. Six years later, it’s still empty.

A similar story resides in Dongtan Eco-City. Plans were made and amended several times. Infrastructure was built. Not much is going on physically and socially at the site today. Luckily, Dongtan is located in a naturally formed island that enjoys an authentic ecosystem. A lot of critics see the stagnation of the project as the failure of management. There was political good will, careful designs, a devoted local authority and investors, as well as a number of potential residents. But there was no institution or mechanism to facilitate the cooperation of all these elements.