DongTan Eco-City

Posted by jepoyzter under Go-Green

Is this true? China? Well better be late than never. Linfen, China is one of the most polluted city according to National Geographic.

According to National Geographic:

Linfen sits at the center of China’s prodigious coal industry, which is largely unregulated by the government. Residents describe choking on coal dust, and local health clinics have reported an upsurge in bronchitis, pneumonia, and lung cancer, according to the institute.

“The one thing that blew me away was in Linfen, three million people are affected by air pollution,” said William Suk, acting deputy director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

And now there are news that China is constructing the most eco-friendly city in the world which is situated near the city of Shanghai.

According to Wiki:

Dongtan was presented at the United Nations World Urban Forum by China as an example of an eco-city, and is the first of up to four such cities to be designed and built in China by Arup, a global design and engineering company. The cities are planned to be ecologically friendly, with zero-greenhouse-emission transit and complete self-sufficiency in water and energy, together with the use of zero energy building principles. However, the planned ecological footprint for each citizen in Dongtan is currently 2.2 hectares, higher than the 1.9 hectares that the World Wildlife Fund claims is theoretically sustainable on a global scale.

Dongtan proposes to have only green transport movements along its coastline. People will arrive at the coast and leave their cars behind, traveling along the shore as pedestrians, cyclists or on sustainable public transport vehicles. The only vehicles allowed in the city will be powered by electricity or hydrogen.

Steven Finnegan, a British Environmental architect is working on the project.

EPSRC, the UK funding body for academic research, is supporting four Dongtan research networks of UK and Chinese universities to study the research agenda for eco-city design. Arup is assisting in the coordination of these networks and in planning associated Institutes for Sustainability.

Arup , the creative force behind this project and many like it, is designing and creating the master plan of an eco-city near Shanghai. The first phase of Dongtan should be complete by 2010 and will include enough housing for 5-thousand people. The city will grow in phases, up to a population of a half million people by 2050.

Wow! Sounds promising eh? Well we’ll just leave it to the planning for now.

BTW, here are some alleged plan for Dongtan.