TIANJIN, China ? Fifty years ago, during a time of food shortages, China?s young socialist government singled out a few farm villages as role models for the nation, saying that their high crop yields made them examples that other communities could learn from.
Today, facing challenges like runaway urbanization, soaring energy consumption and environmental degradation, China ?is hoping to establish a different set of paragons. With its cities expected to swell by another 350 million residents in the next 25 years, ?according to World Bank estimates, the government is scurrying to find sustainable urban solutions. ?To that end, it hopes to have 100 model cities, 200 model counties, 1,000 model districts and 10,000 model towns by 2015.
But already, some of the model cities mapped out early on, like Dongtan, an eco-city that was to house 500,000 people on Chongming Island near Shanghai, have been abandoned because of a range of problems like official corruption and goals that proved overly ambitious.
Conversely, an eco-city in Tianjin created in concert with the government of Singapore is the latest, biggest and most successful of the projects to date. The Chinese government hopes that it will emerge as an economic powerhouse along the lines of regional agglomerations of cities in the Yangtze River and Pearl River Delta regions.
A little more than five years ago, this area on Tianjin?s outskirts was a blend of nonarable saline and alkaline land that was virtually uninhabitable. But today, in contrast to water in much of the rest of China, the tap water here is drinkable. More than 400 residents have already moved into the pilot district, which is nearing completion. Around 5,000 apartments have been sold. The city plans eventually to house some 350,000 residents.
This eco-city also stands out because of the attention afforded to it by the Chinese central government. China?s deputy prime minister, Wang Qishan, is a co-chairman of its steering committee.
Tianjin has some of China?s strictest building energy-efficiency standards, and the eco-city is trying to go beyond this by offering developers certification based on more advanced green building standards, said Axel Baeumler, the lead author of a 2012 World Bank report on Chinese eco-cities and a 2011 book about Tianjin.
Perfecting technologies like these could prove useful and cost- effective for retrofitting projects in other Chinese cities, he suggested.
?This is as serious as an experiment currently gets in China and the most advanced of China?s eco-cities, Mr. Baeumler said. ?I think they have a fair chance of getting it as right as one can get it right.?
?The key is that they take stock now, after phase one, and see what works, what isn?t working, and extract lessons learned,? he said.
Looming wind turbines can be spotted as you drive into the city along an avenue lined with solar photovoltaic street lights, but Dalson Chong, a government official said the wind power is apparently not yet connected to the grid. According to a 2009 World Bank report, the city?s heat and power supply will come mainly from outside the city, and renewable energy resources in the area are relatively scarce.
Questions are also being raised about other eco-friendly aspects of the city. Government officials assert that by 2020, 90 percent of travel within the city will be made on foot, by bicycle or via public transportation. Tian Xian, a new resident of the eco-city, said that she walked to work and to stores and traveled by bus when she left the areas.
Each apartment also comes with an underground parking space, however, and government officials said that charging stations and subsidies for electric cars are planned. ?The question is,?If I drive an electric car, how do I charge it?? ? said Yang Fuqiang, a senior adviser on climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Beijing. ?It has to be convenient,? he said. ?If, in the beginning, they get the details wrong, it is hard to make changes later.?
Wide tarmac roads designed for cars dwarf the narrow bike lanes and sidewalks running alongside them here. And while many of the city?s tall slimmer buildings are clustered together to increase walkability, these giant blocks are about four times the size of a typical block in Manhattan and make pedestrian and bike journeys cumbersome, said Arish Dastur, an urban specialist at the World Bank.
It is this lack of a human scale in the basic urban plan, which will be nearly impossible to change once the city is fully built, that has drawn the most criticism.
Critics also say that little is being done to educate residents about energy efficiency and recycling. Although neighborhood centers intended to teach people about sustainable practices will be scattered across the eco-city, each would serve an average of about 20,000 residents. The eco-city has a more complicated recycling system than the rest of the country, with residents being asked to separate their discards into five categories.
Some experts suggest that generous government investment, a strong partnership with Singapore and the city?s location on the bustling coast make what successes Tianjin has achieved hard to replicate.
But Mr. Baeumler is more optimistic about the prospects for other eco-cities and about Tianjin itself. ?It?s very easy to say, ?Look at Tianjin, it won?t work,? and a lot of people do,? he said. ?But the other way of looking at it is, China is moving 350 million people to cities over the next 20 years, so you have to think differently.?
?This is one model,? he said. ?There are others out there. Let?s look at them, take stock, and take it from there.?
Michael Lu, a resident who moved into his new apartment in November, seems to agree.
Outside the lone supermarket in the eco-city, he scanned an eerily quiet cityscape dotted with cranes. ?Of course I?m not satisfied with the current state of the eco-city,? Mr. Lu said. ?But I?m hoping that in three or four years, it?ll be very different.?
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