Strategies for sustainable urban development: towards green(er) Chinese cities?

Abstract

In the face of more and more environmental pollution and the rapid pace of urbanisation, sustainable urban development has become an increasingly important issue for China. As the country aims to bring urbanisation levels up to 70% by 2035, the way its cities develop and the control of resources consumed for growing urban activity are of paramount importance. Yet, despite a rhetoric pushing for the realisation of sustainable cities, urban development practices currently show a persistently different picture, casting doubts over the effectiveness of policies adopted at the different levels of government. The different dimensions of environmental management in sustainable urban development policies still encounter important obstacles in their implementation.

Keywords:

• sustainable urban development
• green cities
• environmental pollution
• environmental management

Acknowledgement

The research for this article was supported by the Cai Yuanpei programme jointly run by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the China Scholarship Council of the Chinese Ministry for Education.

Notes

1. The Covenant of Mayors is a European movement “involving local and regional authorities, voluntarily committing to increasing energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources on their territories”. Signatories aim “to meet and exceed the European Union 20% CO₂ reduction objective by 2020” (see the official page of the Covenant of Mayors, accessed on 27 April 2014 http://www.covenantofmayors.eu/index_en.html). Energiestadt is a similar initiative, involving 355 Swiss cities. Through their action, adhering cities save every year about 120.000 tons of CO₂, while producing and utilising energy from renewable sources (see the official page of Energiestadt, available in German, French and Italian, http://www.energiestadt.ch/).

2. In 2010, the EU recast its Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings, first issued in 2002. According to the directive, Member States should establish minimum requirements for energy performance in new and existing buildings, while ensuring that by 2012 all new buildings present energy consumption levels are near to zero.

3. Interviews were conducted between March and June 2013 and between October and December 2013 in Beijing and Shanghai, specifically focusing on urban development aspects of sustainability: buildings and urban construction. Some 70 experts were interviewed from the business and academic sectors, as well as from NGOs and cooperative agency members, to construct a general picture of sustainable urban construction policies and practices.

4. PM 2.5, a particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres, has the capacity to deposit in lungs and enter the gas exchange regions of these organs, causing serious damage to breathing apparatus as well as being responsible for aggravated heart or lung diseases. When there is a high concentration in the atmosphere, namely surpassing 75 micrograms per cubic meter, it can be an important cause of premature mortality in the elderly and people affected by cardiopulmonary diseases, beyond causing respiratory problems for the rest of population.

5. In an effort to increase transparency, cities started to regularly display data through mobile phone applications or advertisements in the metro, while US Embassy measurements, by then accessible only through protected firewalls, became readable to Chinese citizens.

6. In January, the US embassy air quality indicator (AQI) displayed several times levels superior to 700, a number going beyond the scale of the air quality index (the maximum grade is 500), and 30 times superior to the levels normally considered as acceptable for health by the WHO.

7. Fieldwork observations.

8. Playing on the historical rivalry between the two cities, the joke showed a Beijinger and a Shanghainese talking about their respective situations. The first claims that he was lucky since he did not need to buy cigarettes anymore. By opening the window he would have enough smoke. The Shanghai inhabitant responds that he was even luckier, since he could have pork soup just by turning on the tap.

9. Tests revealed that the animals carried porcine circovirus, a common disease affecting pigs but normally not harmful to humans.

10. In 1994, a flood in the mainstream of the Huai river and alarmingly high levels in its reservoirs pushed the authorities to open up the gates. This caused the pollution accumulated from municipal, industrial and agricultural activities in the reservoirs to be released into the river, resulting in disastrous pollution affecting 1.5 million people’s drinking water (Xia, Zhang, Zhan, & Ye, 2011, pp. 170–171) As far as Songhua river is concerned, the explosion of an aniline production factory located in Jilin in November 2005 spilled more than 100 tons of benzene and nitrobenzene into the river, which expanded all along its basin and polluted also the Russian river Amur (Green, 2009).

11. The Water Pollution Control Law was issued in 1984 and amended, respectively in 1996 and 2008. The disaster in Songhua River stimulated the last revision of the law (Li & Liu, 2009).

12. There are doubts whether this survey is the report Dong Zhengwei required from the MEP (Duggan, 2014).

13. Information retrieved from the official website of UN Agenda 21, http://www.un.org/esa/agenda21/natlinfo/countr/china/inst.htm

14. For a detailed review of these programmes, see Zhou, He, & Williams (2012).

15. Among them Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Kunming were already interested either in the provincial pilot programme of 2010 (Yunnan, Hubei and Guangdong), and/or in the 2011 NDRC pilot project on the establishment of pilot carbon markets (Beijing, Shanghai municipalities, Guangdong and Hubei provinces), resulting in an overlapping of programmes for some localities. These overlaps were also the case for the other two national programmes, with some cities cumulating the different governmental labels.

16. The NDRC does not count as a Ministry, but it is a more powerful organisation directly under the State Council.

17. Confirmed by different experts in the building sector interviewed during the fieldwork.

18. It is not possible to offer a quantification of the difference, but some experts in building engineering confirmed this aspect during the fieldwork.

19. Building design in China can happen within three to four weeks, and for this reason professionals do not have enough time to take into consideration building energy efficiency and other building quality concerns.

20. This information was constantly repeated by experts in the building sector interviewed during the fieldwork.

21. The Chinese government foresaw 45 yuan per square meter if buildings reach 2-star label, and 80 yuan per square meter if they reach the 3-star.

22. Fieldwork information.

23. Though empty buildings are also subject to investment and speculative purchases, so many of them are actually sold.

24. Fieldwork information.

25. Fieldwork information.

26. During an exchange with an urban planner in Shanghai, the planner presented a project he was compelled to do, where the local governor of the city asked him to flatten an entire area characterised by several hills. This area was bound to be the site of a business district – for, in the eyes of the planner, it was useless as “it was a little city in the middle of nowhere”. Not only would this intervention have endangered the natural hydrological flow of water guaranteed by the local topography, but the planner was also requested to think about a system to artificially bring water to this new area. This made the whole project completely irrational.

27. Investments that imply cash-strapped local government to further sell land, perpetuating a vicious circle.

28. Energy demand for the transportation sector is forecast to grow at 3.7% annually by 2040 (EIA, 2013). This growth will not only be due to the expansion of the car fleet in China, but also to a more generalised growth of the transportation sector, following the needs of urbanisation.

29. Data retrieved from the World Bank database of CO2 emissions for transport, at the following URL http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.CO2.TRAN.MT-: accessed 14 February 2014.

30. Public transportation was mentioned for the first time in an official document issued by the State Council – Comprehensive Energy Reduction Work Programme – linking the construction of public transportation services to energy saving strategies in urban transport (Pan, 2011, p. 10).

31. To offer some data on the dramatic pace of diffusion of cars in China and especially in the two cities: in 2004, both cities had about 2 million motor vehicles, but already six years later the discrepancy between car growth trajectories in the two cities became evident, with Beijing having 4.8 million and Shanghai only 3.1 million. These data, provided by a research project conducted by MIT Urban Planning, show that private car owners in 2011 represented 38% of Beijing households, while in Shanghai they were only 18%. The difference in results is due to specific policy choices of the two cities, with Shanghai opting earlier for a car ownership management policy, while Beijing (later than Shanghai) has preferred to control car use by having a “lottery” for the acquisition of car plates (after the Olympic games). For relevant information, see http://dusp.mit.edu/idg/project/managing-cars, accessed 14 February 2014.

32. Mainly inherited from the period of the planned economy, water management in China is divided among five ministries, a situation already known for the overlapping of competences and difficulties in the coordination of the different administrations. The Ministry of Water Resources prepares water allocation plans, focusing on a quantitative aspect, while the MEP is in charge of water quality, except that of groundwater, under the responsibility of the Ministry of Land and Resources. The Ministry of Health sets the national drinking water standards for local suppliers, generally constituted by public supply entities owned by local governments (Cosier & Shen, 2013, pp. 63–65). As far as prices are concerned, NDRC is responsible for setting them, while the MoHURD is technically responsible for the development of water supply infrastructure. Both MEP and the Ministry of Water Resources share responsibility for its supervision.

33. For example, different cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Changzhou have introduced rapid bus transit lanes. Some of them – Beijing, Shanghai (unfortunately not diffused in the city centre), Hangzhou and Yangzhou – have also started implementing public bike schemes and are considering car sharing programmes.