Can China become Sustainable?

Nearly a quarter of the world’s population live in China, yet the country has less than ten percent of the world’s land, and less than ten percent of that is arable or crop farming land. The rest is mountainous or desert. China’s solution to freeing land for farming is to build as dense as possible; Chinese cities average a remarkable 27,300 people per square mile.

These growing cities create a tremendous demand for energy. Dirty coal-fired plants account for most of China’s energy, but are a leading cause of pollution and the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. The country is on track to add 562 coal-fired plants in the next eight years - nearly half the world total of plants expected to come online in that time. Combined with plants being built in India and the United States, coal energy looks to ‘bury’ any gains in carbon emissions made by the Koyto protocol. According to the Christian Science Monitor, by 2012, the plants in these three countries are expected to emit as much as an extra 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide. In contrast, Kyoto countries by that year are supposed to have cut their CO2 emissions by some 483 million tons.

The population’s growing demand for cars will lead to increasing tensions with the United States for control over the world’s oil resources. China is in the midst of contructing a new highway system. Accourding to the BBC, ‘”every year China is constructing around 4,000 km of expressways, towards its target of connecting every city with a population of 200,000 or more to an 85,000 km national motorway network. Half the work is already done.”

Alternative sources of energy create their own problems. The construction of dams in China have displaced millions of people and have had a devestating impact on local ecosystems. The most famous, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, is a massive $24 billion project, the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, some five times the size of the Hoover Dam.

Clearly there is a need for new thinking about urbanization in China. Near Shanghai, in the south east of the country, a massive development called Dontan is planned on an island in the Yangtze. Here permission has just been given to build what officials claim to be the world’s first sustainable city. According to the Times, the development, slated to be roughly the size of Manhatten, will be designed by the British planning and design firm Arup. The firm’s press release describes their role in the city’s construction:

The first phase of Dongtan is planned to be completed by 2010 when the Expo will be held in Shanghai. This phase will include a wide range of developments with urban parks, ecological parks and world class leisure facilities. Priority projects include the process of capturing and purifying water in the landscape to support life in the city. Community waste management recycling will generate clean energy from organic waste, reducing landfills that damage the environment. Combined heat and power systems will provide the technology to source clean and reliable energy. Dongtan will be a model ecological city, and its buildings will help to reduce energy use, making efficient use of energy sources and generating energy from renewable sources.

This isn’t the first time a Westerner to have grand visions of a green China. Architect and author William McDonough has made much of sustainbility in Asia. The questions, is what are the intentions of these foreigners? And what impact can they have.

BLDGBLOG has three great observations about these developments:

1) Several generations’ worth of infrastructural planning and construction are occurring in China over the span of two decades.
2) The “eco-city” of Dongtan represents a positive model for urban design and development ‚Äì shaming the United States, in particular, as libertarian pro-Bush anti-urbanists face having to rebuild New Orleans, in a flood zone, below sea level.
3) The Chinese highway and train systems, impressive enough (even if only on the level of national mythology), could have disastrous religious, cultural, and environmental impacts on the people of Tibet, the population of greater China ‚Äì and perhaps on the global climate at large. This is something I’ve hardly even begun to discuss.

The scale of the density and development has been well document by the photographer Edward Burtynsky, previously mentioed here. Highway image above from here. Shainghai image by Sze Tsung Leong.

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