Architecture and Design

Dongtan - where’s the news?

(Illustration via Arup)Arup, a U.K.-based global business and design consulting firm, got plenty of play in The Independent this week, as the firm’s director, Peter Head, wrote an article about Dongtan, what he describes as “Arup’s masterplan for the world’s first eco-city.” Basically, this is the message: “Ah, Arup, the green pioneer! The chivalrous eco-knight of green architecture! The masterplanner of sustainable design! China is the new frontier!…blah blah blah.”

• Harnessing technology and engineering: creating the world’s first sustainable city
  By Peter Head
  The Independent
  November 12, 2007

The project aims to use existing technology and engineering to demonstrate that environmentally friendly and sustainable urban growth are not mutually exclusive.

Dongtan will emerge as a city where energy consumption in buildings and transport is fully powered by renewables. It will embrace closed-loop recycling,where all waste is reused or recycled within the system. It will maximise production and use of local organic fresh food and it will be self sufficient in water supplies.

I’ve heard about Dongtan before. I remember reading an announcement about it two years ago, in the fall of 2005, when I was interning at Shanghai Talk magazine. (Coincidentally, the latest online issue actually has an article about urbanization in China: “A Tale of New Cities.”)

Back then, way before ResponsibleChina.com was even a twinkle in my eye, Dongtan sounded too good to be true. An entire eco-city three-quarters the size of Manhattan built from scratch? Who’s building this? Who’s paying for it? What Chinese companies are involved? What are the obstacles and challenges to this endeavor? Have there been setbacks? Is the technology behind it feasible? How will construction affect the surrounding wetlands? Will local Chinese people be able to afford living there? Why build a new city when so many of China’s other cities need sustainable design? Has actual progress been made? (Apparently, by 2030 there will be more than 500,000 people living in Dongtan. Has anyone moved in, yet?)

Legitimate questions, I think, that demand thorough answers.

But Mr. Head’s piece in the Indie is nothing more than a press release. He regurgitates information that you can find on Arup’s corporate Web site. He says nothing of the costs of the project (both financial and environmental.) He talks about reducing the carbon footprint of the city, but doesn’t mention exactly how, except for glossing over terms like “closed-loop recycling” and “renewables.” He sticks to Arup’s party line about its “holistic” approach to engineering and refers to “sustainability as an all-encompassing integrating and guiding principle.” Finally, instead of answering questions, Head only leaves you begging for more:

Planning an eco-city is an unknown, and undoubtedly the process that Arup has started with Dongtan will be improved on in future.

Well, duh, we all know about the unknowns. We don’t need newspapers to tell us that.

There was a longer article about Dongtan published in the same paper last February. The reporter, Clifford Coonan, gets into more specifics than Head (i.e. “The initial phase will cost around £1.5bn, but the figures are expected to rise into the double-digit billions.”) But he only talks to Arup’s planners: Peter Head (you know about him already) and Chris Luebkeman, head of Arup’s global foresight and innovation initiative. So that’s all we got–a sprinkling of quotes from a couple of talking heads. Where are all the other sources? Both articles–Head’s latest contribution and Coonan’s previous story–are basically perpetuating the errors of “greenwashing” that we see in the media.

From what I’ve read about it so far, Dongtan sounds like a fairytale. Coonan’s article opens with an anecdote of an unidentifiable “Wang Enming,” who sounds like a character from Chinese Disneyland:

…he emerges from the subway in Dongtan to listen to the sound of flocks of birds settling on the wetlands near the metro station, undisturbed by man as they prepare for a winter migration. Cycling the remaining three minutes home to his apartment, he marvels again at the fresh breeze coming off the mighty Yangtze river…

Sounds like that opening scene in Cindarella, with the lovebirds and dancing mice…

I don’t mean to be pessimistic–trust me, I believe China holds great potential for green construction and I admire architects and other building professionals for taking the “great green leap forward,” so to speak– but sometimes it’s hard to believe the hype.

If you’re craving something that approaches Arup’s super-duper “masterplan” with a more critical eye, take a look at some of these links (please submit your own links, too):

• Dongtan: Eco-Potemkin
  By Almerindo Portfolio
  China Economic Review
  April 19, 2007

• China’s Dongtan Eco-Village – and how the press fell for it hook line and sinker
  Ethical Corporation Blog
  April 19, 2007

• Will The Dongtan Development in China Be The World’s First Eco-City?
  By Leonora Oppenheim
  Treehugger.com
  April 30, 2006

[tags] Dongtan, sustainable architecture, eco-city, China, Arup[/tags]

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