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Eco-cities in China: Pearls in the Sea of Degrading Urban Environments?

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Eco-city Planning

Abstract

Economic reforms in China from the 1980s have created substantial material wealth and raised consumption to an unprecedented level. With rising affluence and demand for quality living, densely urbanized zones are increasingly being developed into eco-conscious townships or eco-cities. Whilst commercial entrepreneurship may have adopted norms of eco-city construction in selected sites including coastal areas, major cities and their rapidly extended metropolitan zones have encountered major pollution problems, threatening health and quality of life of ordinary residents. Will eco-cities serve as a normatic model for other Chinese cities to follow towards an improved urban environment? Or are they merely nodal points serving more commercial interests catering to the need of rising middle classes? This chapter investigates the hindrance and potential in developing an environmentally sustainable urban system in a country undergoing a late but rapid urbanization backed up by a huge surplus rural population eager to settle down in the cities. This is followed by analysis of public policy measures in energy saving, promotion of renewable energy, public transport, reforestation, recycling of water and other materials. Finally, the role of ecocities is studied in terms of whether they have the potential to lead a new development path towards a more sustainable urban future in China.

China’s current development is ecologically unsustainable, and the damage will not be reversible once higher GDP has been achieved.

Zhenhua XIE, Minister of State Environmental Protection Agency, China (Arup 2007).

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Professors Ian Douglas and Pierre Laconte for their invaluable comments on an earlier draft based on which improvements were made. All errors, if any, are mine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Tai-Chee Wong

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  1. Tai-Chee Wong
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Correspondence to Tai-Chee Wong .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Walk 1, Singapore, 637616, Singapore

    Tai-Chee Wong

  2. School of Design & Environment, National University of Singapore, Architecture Drive 4, Singapore, 117566, Singapore

    Belinda Yuen

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Wong, TC. (2011). Eco-cities in China: Pearls in the Sea of Degrading Urban Environments?. In: Wong, TC., Yuen, B. (eds) Eco-city Planning. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0383-4_7

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