CHINA BLUEPRINT

Dongtan might not have broken physical ground yet, but the once-radical principles and ideas in the world’s first eco-city masterplan have already been embraced across the world. Even America wants one now.

Words Pamela Buxton | Images Arup

IT’S BEEN MORE than two years since Arup’s last involvement in the masterplanning of the world’s first eco-city – Dongtan outside Shanghai. It was a high profile, ground-breaking concept – though not literally. Construction is yet to begin, although Arup says it hasn’t given up hope. Nor has it had time to feel disappointed by the lack of action. It’s been far too busy working on other sustainable cities and developments around the world, including Wanzhuang – another Chinese eco-city expected to start in the near future; a new town in Cambridgeshire, UK; and perhaps the biggest challenge, Destiny – a new city in car-loving, oil-dependent America.

Dongtan was always about far more than a built outcome. It has been the impetus for sustainability research and global knowledge transfer – there are plans to establish a sustainability institute which will be a sister to the one being set up in the Thames Gateway. Guidelines on developing eco-cities are being drawn up at Shanghai’s Tongji University.

‘I’m very proud of what we’ve done, very positive about it. It’s been a continuum of learning. We haven’t kept it to ourselves,’ says Peter Head, Arup’s global head of planning, who senses a real momentum in sustainability thinking. Ideas that seemed radical at the time of Dongtan are now widely accepted – one sign of the huge change in sustainability thinking that has taken place.

Along the way, plenty of lessons have been learnt from Dongtan, says Head. Most importantly, any real attempt at sustainability has to take an integrated approach that deals with transport, waste, food supply and renewable energy. This includes freight distribution centres on the outskirts of a major city serviced by green vehicles, and anaerobic digesters to deal with waste – both parts of the Dongtan plan. The value of green energy for public transport is firmly established.

‘There’s been huge change. There’s a much greater awareness of the importance of density and the need for integrated planning. People didn’t really think of energy/water/transport as being key to urban planning,’ says Head.

The principal of buying local is expanding fast, as is interest in growing your own food. Internationally, the Clinton Climate Positive campaign has helped raise the sustainability agenda further. Another important principle that Arup established at Dongtan was the degree of density needed to achieve a low-carbon development – 70-100 people per ha, or the equivalent of just four or five storeys. New high-rise mixed use development could be located at transport nodes.

‘You don’t have to have ultra-high rise to make it happen. That’s an important lesson,’ points out Head.

These ideas are beginning to filter through. In the UK, for example, Transport for London is looking at sites for a freight consolidation centre, while Head reports that the Greater London Authority is considering a trial area of the city for sustainable ‘retro-fitting’. This place-making exercise would include more energy-efficient buildings and encourage green public transport and fewer cars, with a knock on effect of cleaner air and less noise leading to more naturally ventilated buildings.

Creating America’s first eco-sustainable city is the sort of challenge Arup leaps at. On the back of its work on Dongtan and other sustainably-led projects, Arup was approached to draw up a sustainability masterplan for Destiny on a 64 square mile site of farmland and waterways in south and central Florida close to DisneyWorld. The founder of Destiny is Anthony Pugliese, whose development company specialises in regenerating under-utilised urban land. He owns the recycling company Green Sky Industries with fellow Destiny founder Fred DeLuca, also co-founder of Subway Restaurants. Together they own the land, and have the backing of the County of Osceola to build the city to cope with the fast rising population of Florida. They hope to provide a city with housing models for all stages and ages which is not only economically and environmentally viable but spiritually too.

Destiny will be a city formed from a series of villages rather than a single large conurbation, although this format was primarily shaped by the availability of development land due to the geography of the site – the developers are committed to using only previously disturbed land. While each village will have its own downtown, one larger one will be a focal point and include a 15-20 storey icon building designed by Genesis Concepts.

‘It’s basically a city of eight villages that offer a wide spectrum of housing and manufacturing and education… We want a city of villages which have their own character,’ says Pugliese.

‘Arup has pushed us to condense and densify the areas of development and design the roads through the property a little bit differently to how we’d envisaged,’ says Pugliese, who hopes the eventual development will meet all Arup’s sustainability goals. The aim is eventually to be carbon neutral, as the 250,000 population city develops over the next 20-40 years. The village approach should help. ‘A lot of the city will be in a walking distance of 5-10 minutes,’ he says.

Destiny is planning a electric light rail system and is encouraging electric cars and scooters by providing plug-in electric outlets downtown. Solar water-taxis will run on the waterways. There will be a solar farm in addition to smaller scale pv solar panels and geothermal heat pumps; water and rubbish will be recycled, waste energy utilised, and biomass crops planted. The hope is to develop an expertise in green industries to boost ‘green collar’ jobs through such developments as the Energy Independence business park. Only 35% of the land is scheduled for buildings, the rest will be left as farmland, park, waterways, and hunting and equestrian areas, giving an overwhelmingly green character to Destiny.

But will Floridans buy into the less car-dependent lifestyle? They will when the price of oil rockets, says Pugliese, adding that attitudes are already changing fast among the younger more environmentally-conscious generation.

Arup is working with Destiny on projects to attract key businesses and organisations to the city while its proponents are busy working their way through the necessary approvals and hope to start, economy permitting, in 2011.

Meanwhile, Arup is hoping that its vision for a new town at Wanzhuang between Beijing and Tianjin will begin to be realised. Like Dongtan, the client is developer SIIC. But unlike Dongtan, the 80 km2 site is already populated by 40,000 people in a series of villages – the challenge is raising this to 400,000 by extending the city of Lang Fang without destroying agricultural land.

The Lang Fang local authority has accepted the key principles of Arup’s plan, according to associate director Pablo Lazo, who leads the design team. It had planned to start the new city from scratch, but this was unpopular locally. The strength of local feeling prompted the local authority to consult SIIC and it was convinced instead to adopt Arup’s alternative vision of working with the existing villages on the site to grow an ‘agricultural city’, retaining precious agricultural land within it.

‘The cultural understanding of dealing with existing communities and not wiping them out is quite new in China. Carrying that message through was a big challenge,’ says Lazo. ‘They hadn’t considered public transport accessibility , provision of green spaces, or agricultural production,’ he adds.

Arup’s plan achieves this in a 25-30 year development framework. On completion it will be carbon-neutral, but the company is pragmatic enough to realise this won’t be possible in the first 10 years or so.

Compact new development is proposed around existing villages while retaining green ‘ecological corridors’ through these new urban areas. This will be a combination of agricultural land and in the middle of the scheme, the retention of existing pear plantations. As well as providing food, these corridors will form wildlife habitats and transport networks for pedestrians and cyclists. While 65% of agricultural land will be preserved, local farmers will be given the choice of staying in their own village or relocating to either a new urban area or a rural farmers’ collective, which will adopt ecologically-based agricultural production to provide a local food supply, increa­­­se soil fertility and minimise pollution.

Arup has dropped previous low rise plans for individual houses in favour of denser development of up to six storeys. There will be a dedicated road for a green public transport loop connecting the villages and all dwellings will be within 3-5 minutes of bus stops or cycle paths. Waste will be collected via segregated chutes and brought by an underground pneumatic system to a single site by the railway station. Only 2% will go into landfill. All domestic electricity will come from renewable geothermal sources.

A sample 10 sq kilometre section of the development strategy is being detailed by a local design institute and Arup hopes this will lead to its commission to draw up design guidelines for each village.

Elsewhere, Arup is working on plans for an eco-city in Baku, Azerbaijan; planning Northstowe, a sustainable new town in Cambridgeshire; and, with Sheppard Robson as lead consultant, an airport city at Minna, Niger – all informed by the principles established at Dongtan. And you never know, Dongtan itself might still come through – Head anticipates a rash of eco-cities in China once all the sustainability development guidance has been established. After all, the sustainable new city talk, it might finally be time for some much needed action.