卦Trigram 2.0

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.

Over the last few years, I’ve become something of a global nomad, shuttling between three bases:

• Cowbridge
• Beijing
• Singapore

This is an interesting  combination, I’ve come to realise. The first is an ancient market town which still has a very strong community despite recent demographic change, and very much has the potential to be self-sustaining economically. The second is, of course, the huge capital city of a gigantic nation. There are still areas with a very strong neighbourhood spirit, although the ‘Old Beijing’ of pre-1949 (or even the ‘new’ Beijing of 1949 – Olympics) is now much diluted. As a city, Beijing isn’t particularly self-sustaining. However, as an old, organic city it has many areas and buildings that could be brought into use for urban farms and other community projects. Beijing is also close to farmland, and its fate is closely tied to the future prosperity, or otherwise, of the  country’s peasant farmers. The third, Singapore, is the most artificial, and is dependent on supplies from outside in order to exist. Although the government constantly warns this country’s citizens how fragile their nation is, there is an emerging national consensus and community spirit. The government reserves all community action to itself, however,regulating and monitoring all citizen activity closely.

As the global recession bites, it’s clear that the global economy will not continue as before; the money simply isn’t there any more. So how will these three bases of mine cope with the end of abundance (in the West), energy scarcity, resource depletion, and peak oil? What can the  West, facing the end of Baby-Boomer affluence, learn from bottom-of-the-pyramid ingenuity? How the West’s knowledge be shared with the Asian poor?