(Originally published on TheCityFix.com)

James Fallows of the Atlantic recently blogged about “today’s enormous, expanding Chinese cities,” comparing the more intimate architecture of Shanghai to the sprawling concrete slabs in Beijing.

“This is not a ‘which do you like better?’ discussion,” he emphasizes.

Rather the question is why the look and feel of Beijing seem so clearly to represent the direction Chinese cities are heading. To oversimplify what this means: although Shanghai probably contains more people than Beijing, it feels smaller. The roads are narrower, they’re more likely to bend or twist, the city unfolds on a smaller scale of neighborhoods and courtyards and little houses. Beijing is bigger and squarer and broader and more grandly imposing.

Fallows confesses that he prefers “the look and feel” of Shanghai and then goes on to ask himself why he feels that way:

“Do I like these small streets and human-scale settings in Shanghai because I am foreign?”

It’s an interesting question. Consider a Mercer Consulting study published in BusinessWeek about the “World’s Top 100 Most Livable Cities,” ranked by the “quality of life” they offer to expatriate executives and their families. Zurich, Geneva, Vancouver and Vienna top the list. Shanghai comes in at #100, flanked by Bratislava, Slovakia and Johor Baharu, Malaysia. Beijing comes even further down the list at #116. Other Chinese cities towards the bottom include Guangzhou, Nanjing, Shenyang and Jilin. Certainly, in this study, it appears expats prefer safe (i.e. Zurich), walkable (i.e. Vancouver) and clean (i.e. Vienna) places to live. But it’s hard to imagine why locals wouldn’t want the same thing.

To read more, click here.

Illustration via Beijing Olympic Games Web site

Read the original press release here.

The Beijing Olympic Village is the first Olympic Village to achieve certification under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system.  The 42 buildings that housed 17,000 athletes from around the world earned a Gold rating, one step below the highest Platinum rating. The residential complex is one of only eight developments like it worldwide, and being in Beijing, it’s the first international project of its kind.

The residential area comprises 22 six-storey buildings and 20 nine-storey buildings of the same style, covering an area of 370,000 square meters. It is the latest example of USGBC’s commitment to engaging the people of China in its vision of buildings and communities that regenerate and sustain the health and vitality of all life within a generation.

The LEED for Neighborhood Development is in its initial pilot phase and integrates the principles of smart growth, New Urbanism, and green building into a comprehensive system for neighborhood design.

“The world’s most pressing issues – including climate change, habitat destruction, water and energy shortages, human health, and social inequities – require global cooperation to solve,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO, and founding chair of USGBC. “The Olympic Games represent the exciting possibilities that emerge when the world comes together. The commitment of the Olympic Village, demonstrated through its success in the LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot program, is an important part of that effort. It sets an inspiring example while the world is watching, and the real, measurable environmental and health effects will be a real benefit to the people of Beijing for years to come.”

The effort started four years ago in 2004, when the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and China’s Ministry of Science and Technology developed a “Protocol for Cooperation in Clean Energy Technologies for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.” The Protocol resulted in plans to seek LEED certification for the Olympic Village.

“China’s growing population, its emerging economy and the opportunities and challenges it represents ensure that China will play a key role in the future of our planet,” Fedrizzi said. “The fact that one of the world’s first LEED for Neighborhood Development-certified plans is a cause for great optimism that China’s growth in the coming years can be a model of sustainable development.”

Official details of the village were very…detailed.  “To ensure the athletes’ sweet sleep, each bed has been designed to be 2.2 meters long, and a special stool will be added to the end of the bed for giants like Yao Ming, whose body length is 2.26 meters.”

Image via Beijiing Olympic Games Web site

I’m very shocked that the world’s first green Olympic Village hasn’t been reported more.  Here in Beijing, I’ve had the TV on constantly for the past 16 days and haven’t heard a peep about it.

Anybody hear about this in the rest of the world?

It’s another example of a country that has paid attention to all the important details needed for a successful Games.

Please see my 30 Boxes Calendar for this listing.

Enter the Green Dragon
China’s Built Environment Value Chain Goes Green
AmCham Shanghai’s Sustainability Conference

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Grand Hyatt Shanghai

Tickets Now on Sale at the AmCham Office!
Shanghai Centre, Suite 568 1376 Nanjing Road West Shanghai, China 200040
Phone: (8621) 6279-7119 Fax: (8621) 6279-7643
E-mail:amcham@amcham-shanghai.org Website: www.amcham-shanghai.org

How does building “green” in China move from marketing hype to reality?

Energy efficiency is a global priority for businesses, individuals and policymakers. It not only offers real cost savings, but it also significantly limits the impact of climate change and enhances energy security. As China continues to focus on reducing the energy intensity of its economy, it also increasingly focuses on promoting sustainability and green technology.

The second annual AmCham Shanghai Sustainability Conference will cover the entire value chain to explore the issue from a practical, business-oriented perspective.

The engaging and thought-provoking program will examine:

• Why should businesses care? Ultimately, how are both the top- and bottom-line impacted?
• The Chinese government can move mountains when it wants. What is it doing to stimulate a focus on sustainability and green technology?
• How can we plan and design for the future so that our built environment becomes a net positive contributor to the human ecosystem?
• Does building ‘green’ cost more? How do you design a building and prioritize all the various technologies to reduce demand on natural resources and create lifecycle savings?
• What are developers not only saying, but doing, about building ‘green’?

It provides a forum to present, explore and discuss new technologies, processes and designs that inject real energy efficiencies into the development value chain. Join business executives and thought leaders as we explore this important and timely topic.

We are pleased to present our keynote speakers:

Rob Watson, Chairman, Ecotech International, Founder of the LEED? Green-Building Rating System and the only foreign recipient of the PRC Ministry of Construction’s Green Building Innovation Award

Jonathan Woetzel, Director, McKinsey Shanghai, and co-author of McKinsey’s recent and forthcoming report’s on China’s Urbanization, Energy Productivity and Carbon Productivity, in addition being the co-author of the HBS Press book, Operation China

They will be joined by an exciting panel of business leaders, urban planners, government officials and academics who will explore the many facets of this important topic.

This conference will be of great value to:

• Real estate investors and developers
• Providers of green technology and energy efficient technology used in the built environment
• Private equity and venture capital investors seeking to understand the China market for the technologies of their portfolio companies
• Corporate users of the built environment looking to reduce their energy usage and consumption

Please don’t miss out on this chance to learn and network with thought leaders and leading business professionals at this dynamic annual event.

Ticket sales start on Thursday, August 21, 2008. Make sure you take advantage of the early bird ticket prices and get your tickets before Friday, September 5, 2008.

Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008
Time: 08:30 – 18:30
Venue: Grand Hyatt Shanghai (???????)
Address: 88 Century Boulevard, Pudong (?????? 88 ?)
Price:
RMB 1,200 (Member ticket purchased before Friday, September 5)
RMB 1,500 (Member ticket purchased after Friday, September 5)
RMB 1,800 (Non Member ticket purchased before Friday, September 5)
RMB 2,100 (Non Member ticket purchased after Friday, September 5)
Price includes conference fee, coffee breaks and cocktail

Definition of AmCham Shanghai Member: You are personally registered as a member for your
company and you have been issued a membership card.

Definition of Non AmCham Shanghai Member: You are not personally registered with AmCham
Shanghai and do not have a membership card, even though someone else in your company may be
registered.

Tickets: All tickets must be prepaid. Tickets will be sold on a first come first serve basis. To secure
your ticket, submit your RSVP form with payment to the AmCham Shanghai office.

Payment: All tickets must be paid for at the AmCham Shanghai office (Shanghai Centre, Suite 568,
1376 Nanjing West Road) in RMB cash, USD cash. Sorry, we are not able to accept Credit Card
payments.

Cancellation Policy: Cancellations made before 5:00PM Wednesday, September 3 will receive a
100% refund. Cancellations made after 5:00PM Wednesday, September 3 will not be eligible for
any refund

A note from Erica:

Here’s an interesting departure from our regularly scheduled blogging about the environment and the Olympics, which often dominates the coverage here on RespChi.

Beijing-based blogger Van Yang writes about CSR in the context of intellectual property rights, something which I briefly mentioned last year, in response to an article by Cornell University Matt Perkins. Blogger IP Dragon does a good job of covering this topic, too, and he wrote an interesting post, referencing RespChi, about the links between intellectual property and the environment here.

Anyway, back to Van: The question is, can open sourcing and copycat engineering actually be a good thing when it comes to creating simple yet innovative solutions to problems like e-waste, pollution, poverty and other crises? We’ll let Van continue asking the questions…

=====

By Van Yang

Intellectual property concerns are a big reason why many businesses aren’t too keen on entering the Chinese marketplace.  Why put all the time, money and effort into lawyers and patents if someone off the street is going to reverse-engineer it, then sell it on the street for 30% the price and with a picture of a monkey on it?

But are these engineers–these entrepreneurs–really pirates or heroes?  We often lament how companies reject open standards and try to stifle you with proprietary file types, connection heads and configurations.  I understand the desires of a company to segment market-share and promote its own technology, but the consumer is the loser when they have to buy different types of phone chargers when they buy a different gadget.  Not only are they forced to spend more money, but the environment doesn’t fare well either with this excessive generation of e-waste.

I was inspired to this topic because of a recent cell phone charger incident.  Having just arrived in Beijing, I’m borrowing a friend’s cellphone.  She had to leave for a business trip before giving me the charger, so I went out to buy my own.  I meandered into a little local shop, perusing the shelves for a charger.  Not finding one, I asked the store clerk, “Do you have any cell phone chargers for a Samsung phone?”

Entirely ignoring the brand, he responded, “Cell phone charger? Yeah, we have those. Here.” After opening up the box and staring at it for a minute, I had no clue how this was supposed to work.  So then he showed me the Omnipotence Travel Charger:

Isn’t that interesting?  They broke the design concept down to the most common denominator.  It’s not very convenient, since I can’t talk and charge at the same time, but useful nonetheless.  It cost me 8 yuan, which is about US$1.50.

Perhaps Chinese copy-cat engineers aren’t pirates, but are the incognito vanguard for an open-source technology movement. Open-source technology refers to the philosophy that each individual or organization develops technology for the common good with out expecting profit or patenting. Open-source has gained the most ground in the IT arena, its greatest champion being Google, Inc.  Google’s “do no evil” motto includes allowing users to freely import and export their data into applications other then its own.  Since users can easily try different programs without losing their data integrity, the playing field is leveled among applications.  The “best” program is measured by popularity, and software programmers are constantly forced to improve and innovate to keep ahead of the competition.  The end result is high quality products at either a competitive price or, the most attractive of all prices, free.

In the physical engineering world, the Goodstove movement seeks to design efficient stoves for the millions using traditional or less efficient biomass stoves, so that these clean stoves, if adopted, would help in mitigating climate change.

Now, this is not about advocating the open-source of everything. Talented people who design amazing products should be the ones who reap the reward for their efforts.  Even Google balances and mixes its open-source with closed source.  But it does beg the question about a community of designers and engineers opening and embracing certain standards for the benefit of all.   Open-source boosts innovation by tapping into the community to help polish, publish, and propagate products, and invites new competitors to enter the field, whether they be a start-up in San Deigo or a workshop in Wudong.

What do you think?  A bunch of pirates or hero innovators?

Christine Lu of The China Business Network brings us another great podcast about URBN Hotels & Resorts, an eco-friendly boutique hotel and resort company based in Shanghai. The company’s first luxury hotel, a 28-room property catered to design-focused “urban world travelers,” bills itself as being China’s first carbon neutral hotel.

URBN Hotels’ vision is to expand its concept to other cities in China so that people can have unique experiences reflecting the diversity of the destinations to which they travel. There are plans to develop 20 URBN boutique Hotels & resorts in tourist and business cities throughout the country in next 3 years. The company is negotiating on sites in Beijing, Hangzhou, Dalian, and Suzhou in the immediate future. Continuing to rehabilitate existing structures and growing green will be essential to URBN’s strategy even as the size of the hotels increase to 50 to 70 rooms.

The entrepreneurs behind the concept, Scott Barrack and Jules Kwan, are primarily dedicated to luxury real estate investment and development (they co-founded spacedevelopment, responsible for the fancy serviced apartments of innshanghai, as well as the high-end showroom, Torana House), but recently, both businessmen have become increasingly attracted to green construction and social entrepreneurship.

For example, the hotel in Shanghai uses recycled wood and brick reclaimed from old Shanghai houses that are currently being destroyed in light of the country’s rapid development. “One of the key problems in construction in China is that it’s always built as fast as possible and as cheap as possible,” according to Kwan. He says that green construction may require more money up front, but eventually, the overall running costs are much lower. “Economically, it’s a better decision.”

There’s also the issue of labor rights and regulations. Often times, Kwan says, constructions sites in China are filled by thousands of migrant workers who are not held to the same protection and safety standards that many employees enjoy in Western countries.

“When we look at green and sustainable developments, we look to how to make a project work economically,” Kwan says. “Also, it’s very important, that as the world moves into the future, we have to start finding better ways to build. It’s definitely possible. The beauty of it is, if it’s done int he right way, it’s actually a better business decision, so everyone wins.”

Thanks again to Christine, for continuing to cover China’s business scene, as well as for inspiring me to develop ResponsibleChina.com

Download her full podcast here.

(Photo courtesy of Caroline Campbell)

Caroline Campbell first fell in love with nature while growing up on a pig farm in rural England. Since then, she has traveled the world, telling stories about the importance of the environment, climate change and sustainability. Originally trained as a zoologist at the University of Edinburgh, Campbell became fascinated by the power of media. As a self-taught journalist and producer, she began her career by working for the BBC, for which she still produces radio features. Her first film for the BBC, “Global Dimming,” won the prestigious Wildscreen Planet Earth award and was requested to be viewed privately by the British Parliament “to expose a misunderstood aspect of the climate change debate,” she says. Campbell also worked as associate producer with the Sea Studios Foundation, in cooperation with National Geographic, on the production of “Strange Days on Planet Earth,” hosted by Edward Norton.

Today, Campbell is the creative director and co-producer of the Green Dragon Media Project, a multimedia report about the green construction industry in China. (Read her full bio/resume here.)

=====

Listen to my podcast interview with her:

03-responsiblechina_-caroline-campbell-from-the-green-dragon-media-project.mp3

(Music credit: “Fresh,” byMadMaxXB from GarageBand.

=====

“The Green Dragon Media Project expands internationally-supported research initiated by the Monterey Institute of International Studies in the U.S. and sponsored by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. The Media Project was born out of recognition of the need to facilitate expansion of sustainable construction efforts in China through an effective multimedia communication strategy. The immediate goal is therefore to create a multimedia online report highlighting the potential opportunities for acceleration of China’s movements towards sustainability. The audience for this report includes key international players who are in a position to respond to these opportunities.”

You can read more about the project here, where you will find a list of interviewees, an image gallery, and information about how to become a sponsor. Campbell recently edited a 20-minute film containing interviews with key players in China’s green building industry. “It will just open the ‘Pandora’s Box,’ if you like, to see what’s there,” she says of Green Dragon Media’s introduction to an international audience. (The film recently debuted at Chicago’s Green Build Expo on November 8th.)

Campbell says she believes in the potential for China to be a leader in the green building industry, but she acknowledges that there are a couple of barriers to the country’s success. The first is a general lack of understanding among Chinese developers about the green building industry, mainly because the country does not have trade associations to help disseminate information about sourcing new products and technology. “It gets left to the business people, who are very busy, so there’s very little understanding on how to get hold of products and how much they cost and who’s making them,” Campbell says.

The second barrier is a lack of education among local government officials about the central government’s energy efficiency policies. “If you’re putting these fairly ambitious energy saving codes on every building in China through the central government, and you’re not enforcing them, and your local government officials don’t really understand the reasoning, they see a much cheaper way of doing it,” Campbell says. “It’s not going to happen that easily unless the people are educated about the actual cost benefits and social benefits.”

The goal of the Green Dragon Media Project, then, is to educate people around the world about China’s unprecedented opportunity for green construction and to create a community of green building professionals and advocates who can share information with each other. Eventually, Campbell and her team hope to launch a new media production company that focuses specifically on the green building industry. People who might want to get involved in the initiative include people with technical media skills or English-Chinese translation experience, as well as business professionals, such as venture capitalists, who want to support the project’s goals.

Contact the Green Dragon Media Project team:

• Max Perelman
• Research Director / Producer
• +1.831.917.7641
• max@greendragonfilm.org

• Caroline Campbell
• Creative Director / Producer
• +1.831.224.6083
• caroline@greendragonfilm.org

• River Lu
• Localization Director / Interpreter
• +1.831.917.5187
• rivergreendragon@gmail.com

[tags]China, green construction, sustainable development, Green Dragon Media Project[/tags]

Two recent blog posts examine the potential for foreign investors to capitalize on sustainable building projects.

Steve Dickinson from the China Law Blog recently explained how some recent changes to China’s real estate laws will restrict foreign investment.

• “Foreign Investment In China, Part II: Can You Say Last Nail In The Real Estate Coffin?”
  By Steve Dickinson
  China Law Blog
  November 13, 2007

• In May of this year, the notorious Circular 50 requires all foreign invested real estate projects, no matter the size or nature, be approved at the national level in Beijing. This allows Beijing to turn the market on and off through its approval authority.

• In July, the State Administration for Foreign Exchange issued Circular 130, regulating and limiting the use of foreign exchange in real estate investments.

Dickinson says there are a couple of reasons why Chinese authorities would want to restrict foreign investment in real estate:

First, foreign investment is believed to drive up real estate prices to the detriment of local citizens. Second, the flood of money into the real estate market was exacerbating China’s excessive accumulation of foreign reserves.

As a follow-up to Dickinson’s post, Managing the Dragon offers a suggestion that he says will help foreign developers “create incentives for the government to support their projects”: the development of sustainable buildings.

• “Sustainable Palm Greasing”
  Managing the Dragon
  November 15, 2007

As Steve Dickinson very concisely summarizes in this recent post on China Law Blog, the government is actively expanding their control over foreign investment in China’s real estate market. That isn’t to say that real estate is completely off limits for foreign players, but rather that the Central Government has put themselves in a position where they can disapprove or delay projects completely at their own discretion. In this sort of environment, with many opportunities remaining, especially in Tier II cities, foreign developers and investors will be actively seeking ways to create incentives for the government to support their projects.

One excellent approach that stands out clearly in my mind is the development of sustainable buildings. The numbers related to energy use / waste in China’s commercial buildings are clear – office buildings consume approximately 25% of all electricity in the country and about 80% of China’s power is generated by heavily polluting, coal burning power plants. As such, the development of a sustainable building sends the message that the community where it is being built is taking progressive action to cut back on energy use and pollution, and this is great PR for any politician and for China as a whole….

The vast majority of construction in China is happening in provincial capitals and smaller cities and these are the areas that foreign developers are most keen to establish a presence – margins are higher and land is in greater supply. Perhaps sustainable building is the “palm grease” that these developers need to get government support and continue to succeed in China’s increasingly impenetrable real estate market.

Read his full post here.

[tags]China, green architecture, sustainable development, foreign investment, real estate law[/tags]

• 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]

(Photo via Green Dragon Media Project)

My recent interview with Caroline Campbell from the Green Dragon Media Project (podcast pending, I promise!) inspired me to learn more about green buildings in China. (Browse an image gallery from the Green Dragon Media Project’s recent tour of China here.)

Conventional city planning in China usually involves “the SuperBlock, a model that relies on a centralized infrastructure of power plants and electric power lines, sewage treatment plants and sewers, and a sanitary water supply provided by the city or provincial utilities,” as recently reported by GreenBiz.com.

But scientists and designers are engineering new ways to create resource-efficient “EcoBlocks.” And China–where the rate of environmental degradation is at an all-time high–serves as a global test site for sustainable living.

GreenBiz.com examines one particular program, originating out of U.C. Berkeley’s Urban Sustainability Initiative (USI), to help make the ecologically utopian ideal of large-scale green architecture a reality.

• Eco-Cities Take Root
  Source: Lara Abrams Melman
  GreenBiz.com

A hugely collaborative effort, involving an interdisciplinary team put together by the College of Environmental Design at Berkeley, the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute and the Gordon Moore Foundation, the team has been working to integrate the best of clean technologies into the decision-making processes of urban areas throughout the developing world. In 2006, U.C. representatives met with officials from central and local governments in China to identify a site suitable for development of an EcoBlock prototype and settled on Qingdao, a 600-unit building that will be replicated eight and a half times across a 23 hectare (56 acre) plot of land.

The potential for environmental, social and health savings that the EcoBlock can deliver is just huge: if 18,333 600-unit EcoBlocks were built, it would keep 34 landfills, 42 power plants, 54 water treatment plants, and 51 wastewater treatment plants from being built, at a total cost savings of $38,737,185,000. In a pre-feasibility report on the EcoBlock conducted by ARUP in conjuction with the University of California at Berkeley and Huahui Designs, the company estimates that the Chinese government alone would save 1.3 percent of its GDP from not having to build additional infrastructure to meet demands for energy, clean water, sanitation and waste disposal - and that’s not counting the savings from costs currently associated with treating environmental pollution associated health problems, which currently claims about 10 percent of the country’s GDP.

(Photo via GreenBiz.com)

But eco-city development is not necessarily a cure-all for pollution ills, in China or elsewhere. According to the dean of Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, Harrison Fraker:

[S]uch eco-city developments will require a completely different way of doing business — at least in the U.S. — because the way the system is set up currently, he says, is slanted heavily in favor of developing fast and getting out, with minimal responsibility for environmental impact over the long term. In other words, the developer relies on a centralized power supply and they just plug into it, develop, and hand the keys to the home owner, who ends up being the one who pays the bill(s) going forward, while the developer just sells and gets out. Eco-city developments, Fraker believes, will require some sort of property management with self-interest in operating and maintaining these different, distributed small scale systems.

There are some other challenges to eco-development:

1. “Clean” technology can be expensive.
2. It can be difficult for foreign firms and local firms to collaborate, which is necessary in order to reinforce responsible business practices.
3. The idea of gated eco-communities do not always appeal to local cultural attitudes and norms.
4. The incentives to build “green” are not always evident at the outset.

Despite facing some of these potential obstacles, China holds incredible potential to launch a worldwide movement towards revolutionary sustainable design.

See some of the links below for more information on interesting eco-projects in China:

• The Water Cube
  National Aquatics Center, Beijing
  By ARUP

• Dongtan Eco-City
  by ARUP

• Integrated mass transit
  Chengdu
  by the Urban Sustainability Initiative (USI)

[tags]China, eco-design, ecoblock, superblock, sustainable architecture, Arup, Urban Sustainability Initiative[/tags]

(Photo via What is Enlightenment? magazine.)

Ah, how wonderful life would be if we could just start from scratch?

Well, that’s exactly what architects and engineers are trying to do with utopian “eco-cities,” environmental havens complete with solar panels, windmills, built-in water filtration systems and other sustainable, energy-saving designs.

China’s currently boasts three major eco-cities–Rizhao, Huangbaiyu, and most recently, Dongtan, currently under construction.

But are they all they’re cracked up to be? Not so, says Paul French from the Climate Change Corp:

China’s green construction: Shifting focus from eco-cities to real cities
CCC Newsdesk
By Paul French
July 26, 2007

The rate of growth in China is rapid, and therefore the challenge to improve what is being built to ensure some sort of sustainability is crucial. Consider that in 2005, Shanghai constructed more building space than exists in all the office buildings of New York City. Every month, China adds urban infrastructure equal to that found in Houston, Texas, simply to keep up with the rate of urbanisation.

The fact is that this orgy of construction has largely been decidedly non-green. The accent has been on volume completion, rather than quality or sustainability.

If dreams of creating made-from-scratch eco-cities are unrealistic, what are some better solutions?

According to French, here are some simple but effective measures to combat pollution and wasteful energy consumption:

• equip buildings with better insulation
• encourage people to buy energy saving light bulbs or water use limiting devices
• promote bicycle riding
• limit the use of air conditioning
• increase the price of utilities to discourage wasteful use

Read the full article to see more examples of how “bioclimatic design” can be incorporated into existing structures and cities.

[tags]china, dongtan, eco-city, energy saving, utopia, urbanization, bioclimatic design[/tags]