Architecture and the Built Environment Planning for sustainability at city scale: Reflections on a delayed project, Dongtan, China WEIJIA XIE Degree Project SoM EX 2011-37 Master Program (Two years) Spatial Planning Stockholm 2011 KTH, Department of Urban Planning and Environment Division of Urban and Regional Studies Kungliga Tekniska hogskolan Abstract The recognition that the living and the nature should be harmony has been accepted all over of the world, which is just the objective of the sustainability. In contemporary society, the idea of sustainability plays an increasingly indispensable role in many fields.It also caused concern to the field of city planning.
China has stepped into a stage of high-? speed urbanization, although the city development enjoyed a boom, the process of urbanization also has a deleterious effect on traffic, environment and so on. Chinese cities have to find themselves in different stages of preparedness to adopt and face the sustainable development challenge. As a developing country, there are many changes from urban form, economic activities and city life in China. When the word of sustainable city has been introduced into China, many areas began to try to reach the level of sustainability n city. Then many projects that relating ecological planning have been planed in Chinese cities. One significant development is that the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation has commissioned the world’s first purpose-? built eco-? city Dongtan.
The goal of the project is to use Dongtan as a template for future urban design, but the city seems to have lost its momentum and become delayed. In the paper, it would describe the clearly concept of sustainability for planning strategies in an object way, and according to the evaluating the sustainability ofReflections on a delayed project, Dongtan, China 1. Introduction 1. 1 Background Industrial revolution, which led to the creation of the factory and has many significant changes in agriculture; manufacturing; mining; transportation; technology (Wikipedia, 2011/5/30), has hastened the urbanization process. Then the agglomeration, which is caused by urbanization, has transformed the industrial structure, population, society and spatial structure. Especially in the last 200 years, the significant social change is just the agglomeration of the population in the urban areas.
Some data predict that 60% of the world’s opulation will live in cities by 2030(UNFPA, 2000, p. 25). In the other words, nowadays it is the beginning of the era of an urban-? dominated society. Cities as the political, economic and cultural centers of regions, the economic opportunities, diversity life demand and communications are better in countries. However, the city life is a double-? edged sword, there are also many disadvantages in cities.
The high proportion of the urban population will inevitably concentrate several problems. Because the results of the high rate of industrialization and the rapid urbanization process, natural resources and nvironmental self-? purification capacity have suffered as a consequence. Moreover, a number of environmental problems are not ignored by citizens, most of which are related to climate change. Such as air pollution from industry and traffic when transport is increasing in volume and is not environmentally adapted; water pollution from industry and human being with insufficient sewage systems; land pollution because of unsatisfactory waste management; and also lack of biological diversity etc.Climate change is mostly the 1 Planning for sustainability at the city scale Reflections on a delayed project, Dongtan, China esult of city activities, because cities are the greatest consumers of energy, and CO2 emission and other kinds of air pollution, which are the major cause of such problem, are contribute to the fossil fuels consumption and low energy efficiency.
Those things have happened begins to the period of industrial revolution from 18th to 19th century. For instance, in London, which is the biggest city in that time with the population of 6,500,000, the infrastructure are not able to work well under such press because of the unprecedented expansion in urban land and population, and it also serious problem of emands to housing. In addition, the aggravating living environment like the air and water pollution, the widening gap between the rich and poor, all of this are the concentrated reflection of the society contradiction. People began to recognize it is important that implement the urban planning in order to guide a city development orderly. At such background, Ebenezer Howard published his book To-? morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898, which was reprinted in 1902 as Garden cities of To-? morrow.
At this book, he provide a concept of garden City, which is the ideal city has the merits of city nd country. Then the theory has raised much thought and debate among planners, architects. It is famous as the pioneer in the modren planning theory, which led people begin to concern the environmental issues in city life. Later on, Jane Jacobs critiqued the concept of Garden City in her book; she argued it confused urban design with suburban design.
As the result of urbanization, most American cities have faced the situation of suburban sprawl. Then there is a new topic called ‘new urbanism’ has been provided in the planning field, which is “creating 2 Planning for sustainability at the city scaleReflections on a delayed project, Dongtan, China enduring neighborhoods; making urbanism legal again; making connections a priority; celebrating shared spaces; achieving sustainability; reclaiming urban places once thought lost and renewing a ravaged region” (CNU, 2011/5/30). This theory indicated that urban design should dealt with nature and landscape resources in the light of energy crisis and global climate change. The viewpoints and focus about the urban planning has also changed many times, more specifically, from a concept of Garden City to the new urbanism research, there are many concerns and discussion f urban issues during this period.
Nowadays, when the environment and ecosystem on the earth have been threatened because of the growth of the population, the exploitation for the resource and the industrialization of society, the concept of sustainability has become a popular word in national and international discussions. Then it influenced on the urban design trend more or less in contemporary society as well. In 1987, the definition of it was first coined at Brundtland Report (WCED 1987), and Agenda 21 (UN 1992) have declared the specifically actions for government leaders to protect the earth. It was given urther prominence in the context of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development.
However, it is more describing the sustainable development at the global terms, and this broad definition shows different interest groups will have different thinking and the way of use. So there are many different systems to research the sustainability at city scale based on the definition from those above publication, and sustainable city concept has been thought as an effective approach for urban planning in pursuit of global sustainability trend. After the conversion of Chinese economy that is from a centrally planned conomy to market economy, the People’s Republic of China has made remarkable progress on 3 Planning for sustainability at the city scale Reflections on a delayed project, Dongtan, China economic growth over the last thirty years. The official GDP growth rate of China is 10. 3 % in 2010, and the proportion of GDP in the world rose from 5. 0% in 2005 to 9.
5% in 2010 (People, 2011/6/1). From such figures it can be found that China has become to play an important role in the global economy recently. Although China embarked on the road toward a new market economy, the country still has to face many problems of conomy, social, and the ecology. Those problems came, in large part, from a burgeoning population (Kristen A.
Day, 2005, P. 4). More specifically, the country is rich in resources and vast expanses of fertile land, but the per capita amount of the resources in far below the average of the world; and the same situation of Per-? capita GDP can been seen; the unbalanced distribution of resource has aggravated the gap between the rich and the poor, between different groups of population. It suggested that as an emerging nation of such size, Chinese should keep on the long-? term economic growth with consideration of
