卦Trigram 2.0

The Sino-Singaporean collaboration to build a new green city near Tianjin popped up in the UK Guardian this week. As with other articles recently, the Guardian piece drew a contrast with the failure of the Shanghainese eco-city project being driven by the UK’s Over Arup, which (the asrticle says) over-reached itself.

I’m interested to learn that China is also developing eco-cities in Xinjiang and Liaoning provinces; I’ll have to try to find out more about that.

I’ve been reading about two dead cities recently – one in Russia, the other in China. The Russian city… that gives me an eerie feeling, a sense of ghosts howling in the taiga through endless winter… The Chinese city… leaves me sad. Although they are far apart, they are powerfully connected, and have important messages for our future. The difference between them is that the city in Russia was once a bustling, important city which was abandoned and left to rot. The other city never existed, but represents the abandonment of a vital dream.

The first, unnamed, city is featured in a photo-essay on the English Russia site. It was a closed city during the Soviet era; strategically important because of defence industries (I suppose). Following the funding crisis that came with Soviet collapse, the army couldn’t afford to keep these industries going… and gradually the city shut down. How long did the residents hang on, I wonder, hoping that something would turn up? Did they gradually leave, group by group, household by household? Or did a moment come when people finally realized there would be no salvation, leading to a mass departure? I guess I’ll never know.

I look at the photographs, and wonder: how many of our cities – in China, Europe, the US – will end up the same way, as our oil-dependent, unsustainable global economy breaks down, and climate change becomes more apparent? More and more, it seems that there will have to be major structural changes to our way of life, and surely many cities won’t be able to survive.

The development of sustainable communities is one response. The development of eco-cities, with the ability to be self-sustaining, is another. I’ve written a lot about two such projects over the last few years, both here in China. One is a joint Chinese-Singaporean venture outside Tianjin; the other, an Anglo-Chinese project near Shanghai. Sadly, I find that the Shanghai project, Dongtan island, now seems to be dead in the water. The reasons seem to be complex, but it’s undoubtedly (according to the article in Beijing Today) at least partly due to the connection of the project with Chen Liangyu, who used to be the Communist Party secretary of Shanghai, and who was convicted of corruption. It seems that absolutely no work has been done on the project, and no-one seems to expect that anything will be done now. That’s a great shame.

However, I can still finish on a positive note: the other Chinese eco-city, the one being developed with Singapore, is making progress. Hopefully, it will give us valuable insights into how other cities can be retro-fitted for sustainability – and perhaps (especially high energy-input cities like Singapore!) avoid the fate of that nameless Russian urban ruin.

This didn’t show up when I searched the Straits Times‘ website yesterday, but I just came across it via Google. It isn’t the article I was referring to before, but is pretty informative – and does mention the Finns’ involvement! It’s an article by Tracy Quek: China a leader in developing eco-cities. It’s got an interesting couple of paragraphs deep down:

It intends to stand out from other projects by putting an emphasis on building a strong sense of community among residents, leveraging on 40 years of experience in fostering bonds between people from disparate backgrounds.

‘It’s not just the hardware, but changing the mindsets of people and inculcating in them a whole new way of thinking where they give the environment priority,’ said a source close to the project.

The People’s Association, which oversees grassroots organisations in Singapore, will set up community centres and other grassroots mechanisms that will draw the community closer.

To me, this does reinforce the impression that the Tianjin project is not just a way to boost Singapore’s brand, engineering know-how, and R&D insights, but could also be a way to test social engineering techniques for re-introduction back here – namely, how to build green awareness. And, I have to say, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Following my last post, I idly wondered whether YouTube had anything about China’s eco-cities. Here’s what I found:

Simulated flyover of Dongtan eco-city:

[youtube wvaCOExhHhE]

A BBC report on Dongtan eco-city:

[youtube Ej5IVXI-Jyc]

Finland involved in the Tianjin project?

This was a surprise to me. My reading in the Straits Times here led me to believe that the Tianjin eco-city is a collaboration solely between China and Singapore, but – unless there are two projects near Tianjin – it seems that the Finns are involved as well. Who else? This clip is nearly 5 minutes long and, actually, doesn’t contain anything specific to the Tianjin project, but its YouTube page leads here.

[youtube rR3NIvrKvtc]

More from China Digital Times: it seems that construction of the eco-city at Tianjin, a collaboration between China and Singapore, will begin in July.

It will be very interesting to compare how this goes with the concurrent Anglo-Chinese project being developed by Ove Arup near Shanghai.

There’s been a lot written over the last couple of years about the latter:

• Wired: Pop-up cities
• The Guardian: British to help China build eco-cities
• China Digital Times: China’s Green Revolution
• IEEE Spectrum: How to build a green city

Between those, and other, articles, there’s a lot of detail available on the design of the new city, Dongtan, near Shanghai. The Tianjin project, on the other hand, seems to have generated lots of press releases, but as yet I can find very little detail on how the city will be designed, or how it’s expected to work. I get the impression that the project is still in its early stages as far as design is concerned, even if construction is will commence soon. There was an interesting piece in the Straits Times recently which mentioned, IIRC, that Singapore would be bringing its substantial knowledge of environmental technology to the project, but that the experience gained in the project would be fed back into future urban planning back home in Singapore – so the project is, in effect, an opportunity for Singapore to experiment with green design and architecture in China, see what works and what doesn’t, and use the winning lessons to re-design “the Garden City”. An interesting strategy from Singapore.

Tianjin isn’t far from Beijing, and I wanted to go there anyway. Perhaps I should make a trip in July…