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Good News and Bad News for China’s Eco-cities
Tangshan, a proposed eco-city near Beijing. Photo via ecocity.wordpress.com.
I had a brief conversation with a friend majoring in media about “good news” and “bad news.” He claimed that when you tell someone you have good news and bad news, they will usually request to hear the bad news first. So here’s the bad news: China’s most high-profile eco-towns are failing.
According to Ethical Corporation Magazine, China’s eco-towns planned for Huangbaiyu and Dongtan are not doing so well. In Huangbaiyu, new eco-friendly houses were planned to cost $3,600 (reasonably affordable) and ended up at $20,000 (not affordable at all). The new houses also had garages, even though not a single villager actually owns a car. Sponsored by the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development and Deng Nan, Deng Xiaoping’s daughter, the project is now receiving no funding and U.S. helpers have gone home.
Dongtan was to be the world’s first purposefully built eco-town. Sadly, the project was involved in a large corruption scandal, leading to lack of local interest for no one wanted to be involved in a project sponsored by corrupt politicians. Firms sponsoring the project have withdrawn and nothing has become of the initially heavily publicized eco-town. (Read about RespChi’s skepticism of this project here.)
So what is the good news? Ethical Corporation deems Rizhao - “City of Sunshine” - as a prototype for creating successful eco-towns. Rizhao aimed not to be a high-profile eco-town, but merely to have its energy converted to solar power. Using subsidies and cheap technology, Rizhao has achieved a significant reduction in electric and coal power. Now, 99% of households in the city center and 30% in the suburbs have solar panels.
It seems that the lesson to be learned is gradual, government- and citizen-involved projects are the most likely to be successful.
According to Ethical Corporation:
The evidence suggests that planners wanting to reduce pollution would do better simply to focus on improving the places where people already live. It seems urban planners and the government in China have looked at these high-profile projects and come to the same conclusions. The past 18 months have seen fewer announcements of large-scale Dongtan-like projects, while the government has obviously backed away from commenting on these types of projects in public.
Instead, small-scale initiatives are becoming more commonplace. In Shanghai, for instance, the street lights now come on gradually as darkness falls; buildings must ensure their electricity use is reduced through better management; and new regulations stipulate a 50% reduction in energy use in all buildings by 2010, and 65% by 2020.
The lesson from China: small, local and manageable projects yield far better results and make far more people aware of energy conservation than the handful of eco-beauty-pageants that have received so much publicity in the past few years.
Here is the full article.
Among other successes toward eco-friendly development is a group of 825 apartments in the Erdos Municipality. These apartments boast no-flush, urine-diversion toilets. Also, the Beijing Accord 21 Building, opened in 2000 as China’s first green building, uses 70% less energy than standard buildings.
Tags: arup, beijing accord 21, buildings, China, dongtan, eco-city, eco-town, erdos municipality, ethical corporation, green construction, huangbaiyu, responsiblechina, rizhao, urbanism, urbanization
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8 comments for “Good News and Bad News for China’s Eco-cities”
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Erica
heii….
very nice article…
i love this..
[...] Speaking of the environment: Two new green-friendly cities in China look like duds. A third may have done it right. What’s the difference? [Responsible [...]
[...] Speaking of the environment: Two new green-friendly cities in China look like duds. A third may have done it right. What’s the difference? [Responsible [...]
[...] sustainable “eco-cities” in places like Dongtan and Huangbiyu have encountered many setbacks. The lesson to learn is that in order to calm reckless urbanization, it’s best to think [...]
China must refrain form copying things American at face value - they do not work! They are derived of Science gone by,based on old technologies and corporatism! China must innovate! Reach beyond the long propagandized “Superior American Dream” and see it for what it really is, slavery of the worst form! Failure based on cheap oil! Sustaibnability is the key! China needs to go Solar, Wind, Wave, Tidal, Fydro, and Geo thermal to replace coal, and give more to the common people of the land! China needs infrastructure, China needs population control, China needs education in Science, Physics Chemistry Mathematics, and China needs to explore technologies - as the rest of the world must do, U.S.A. included, to survive peacefully on this planet!
Sustainable development is only most significant if practiced by the ordinary people - not $20,000 high-end fanciful property, or artificial development, as it is ’sustained’ by money and funding. If sustainable development processess are adopted in the everyday living by ordinary people, there will likely be a cascade of voluntary sustainable practice, which will be highly effective. In other words, until these sustainable development processes seen here at Tangshan, Dongtan are made accessible to the public, sustainable development will not be achieved, and the effectiveness of the technology of these eco-towns will not be realized. Only when ordinary people are able to apply these technologies in their own lives, will these sustainable development technologies have a phenomenal effect on China and most possibly the world.
Here is one article I have found that discusses public use of solar power:
http://www.chinasgreenbeat.com/blog/?p=10
It’s a pity that the project is stopped and all references to it was held from the website of Shanghai World Expo in 2010. The critics, such as China Digital Times claim that such projects are “designed by big-name foreign architectural and engineering firms who plunged into the projects with little understanding of Chinese politics, culture, and economics — and with little feel for the needs of local residents whom the utopian communities were designed to serve”.
trackback [...] Speaking of the environment: Two new green-friendly cities in China look like duds. A third may have done it right. What’s the difference? [Responsible [...]