Tianjin Eco-City
Water you can drink straight out of the tap is but one of the appealing features of Tianjin's proposed "Eco-City" of green buildings, currently rising at a breathless pace upon 30 square kilometers of salty brown wasteland just 150 kilometers from Beijing.
As city planners scramble to house up to 1 billion people in China's urban centers by 2030, China has teamed up with the Singaporean government to build an ambitious model city for 350,000 residents over the next decade – at a price tag of 50 billion yuan, according to a 2008 estimate.
"The key objective of the Tianjin Eco-City is to create a model for sustainable development that can be adopted by other cities in China," says Tay Lim Heng, the Deputy Secretary of Singapore's Ministry of National Development.
Designed by top urban planners from China and Singapore, the Tianjin Eco-City aims to strike a more harmonious bargain between highdensity urban living and environmental protection.
Highlights include working with wetlands to provide natural treatment for recycled wastewater and using organic waste to produce heat and power. Government o. cials say 60 percent of the city's waste will be recycled.
Getting it right
Many of China's eco-cities have endured several false starts ending in scandal and displawced farmers, including Dongtan, an abortive planned community located on a grassy island near Shanghai.
But the Tianjin Eco-City authorities are working to distinguish themselves from the morass of utopian debacles with top-level government commitment, stringent environmental standards and an investment plan that emphasizes long-term management.
"To be sustainable and viable we need an economic life here," says Lim Meng Hui, the General Manager of Economic Promotion for the Sino- Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Investment and Development Co., Ltd. (SSTEC), the joint venture company in charge of developing the project.
Lim, who will speak on Thursday in Beijing with SSTEC colleagues at a public event hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), says the city will be a for-profi t venture with a portfolio of projects in clean energy, sustainable real estate, and other environmental solutions.
"I think the partners that come in will be able to generate profi ts outside of the eco-city because the investment will be applicable to other cities in the future," says Lim.
Early interest
The strategy seems to be working. To date, the SSTEC has attracted a reported 30 billion yuan's worth of investments from domestic and international developers, and the ecocity has drawn major interest from prospective residents.
"We can expect residents in the eco-city in the second half of 2011," says Lim. "We had people turning up one year ago at our office asking where they could buy houses." Indeed, that the Tianjin Eco-City will be a place where people actually want to live is a major selling point.
Besides plans to rehabilitate the ecosystem, degraded by centuries of salt farming, planners aim to create a pedestrian-friendly city. An accessible lush green "spine" of vegetation will run through the city's core; private cars will be driven less than 10 percent of the time.
"Residents won't need to drive for school, work or daily necessities and this will cut down on the carbon footprint," says Lim, who is particularly enthusiastic about proposed recreational developments such as an up-market, converted old fi shing village.
Not just for the rich
Defl ecting criticisms that eco-cities are only for those who can a. ord them, Tianjin Eco-City o. cials have pledged to make 20 percent of the homes public and subsidized. Reportedly, the 2,000 villagers who will have to relocate for the project have been guaranteed jobs and housing in the city.
Lim reports that the Eco-City's property prices will mirror Tianjin's existing market at about 10,000 yuan per square meter, but says officials are "still working on the criteria" for lowincome housing.
The bigger picture
Leading ecological urban planner and professor Dr Yu Kongjian stresses that enthusiasm for eco-cities must be complemented by a deeper shift away from high-consuming, high-carbon lifestyles.
"We must change our way of life," says Yu, the Dean of Peking University's Graduate School of Landscape Architecture as well as a visiting professor at Harvard University.
"Today only 40 percent of people live in [China's] cities, but the land has already been overwhelmed."
Tianjin's Eco-City comes as part of a broader central government plan to groom the region as a strategic green economic hub.
Besides the recent opening of the Tianjin Climate Exchange, a domestic carbon market cap-and-trade exchange, the city has been marked by the UN for the establishment of a "low carbon economy development center."
