Author |
Topic: Shanghai Dongtang turn into a "eco-city" (Read 1375 times) |
|
Carrie Ma
BBS Member
BBS God
Gender: 
Posts: 390
|
 |
Shanghai Dongtang turn into a "eco-city"
« on: Jan 12th, 2006, 10:03am » |
 Quote  Modify
|
Message circulated in the Asia Pacific Migratory Waterbirds about the Shanghai plans for development of a eco-metropolis on Chongming Dongtang, which is an important habitat for waterbirds.
APMW 電郵組近日傳閱關於觀察家日報報導在上海崇明東灘建造的生態大都會。崇明東灘 目前是一處水鳥重要的棲息地，亦是東亞澳大利亞水鳥遷徙網絡內的重要地點。
-----Original Message-----
From: Taej Mundkur
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 11:31 PM
To: Asia Pacific Migratory Waterbirds; ramsar-forum
Subject: [APMW] FW: Shanghai plans eco-metropolis on its mudflats
Dear all,
Attached is news about a new major development on the Chongming island, Ramsar Site called Chongming Dongtan Nature Reserve and a site of international importance for migratory shorebirds (designated on the East Asian-Australasian Shorebird Site Network in 1996) and many other waterbirds, including cranes, swans and geese. Last year, a Dunlin "Calidris alpina" marked here and subsequently caught and released on
its nesting grounds in Alaska. Movements of other migratory species have connected this important site to Russia and Australia, New Zealand.
It would be crucial to ensure that such a major development does not endanger the ecological and biodiversity values for which the island has become internationally well known.
With best wishes, Taej
Dr. Taej Mundkur
Wetlands International - South Asia
-----Original Message-----
From: knight
Sent: Wednesday, 11 January 2006 19:32
To: Birding Aus
Subject: [BIRDING-AUS] Shanghai plans eco-metropolis on its mudflats
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,1681385,00.html
Shanghai plans eco-metropolis on its mudflats
The project to transform the mouth of the Yangtse river is the world's biggest single development. Frank Kane visits Dongtan, the unspoilt wildlife sanctuary that international finance will turn into the planet's first 'eco-city'
Sunday January 8, 2006
The Observer
The bleak wetlands of Dongtan seem an unlikely place for a neo-industrial revolution, but if the project being planned for its muddy shores is successful, it could arguably change the course of global economic development.
An hour's ferry ride from the concrete jungle of downtown Shanghai, on Chongming Island in the silty mouth of the Yangtse river, Dongtan is the site of one of the biggest and most ambitious business projects ever undertaken. The Chinese businessmen and British engineers in charge of it envisage nothing less than a new city, with half-a-million millions of inhabitants - but which does no appreciable damage to the earth's environment.
When the Dongtan development is completed, an 'eco-city' with a population a third the size of Manhattan's will have been built at a cost of billions of dollars. If all goes to plan, it will be the first self-sustaining city environment in the world, and the prototype for future urban development in its most populous country.
In the nominally communist People's Republic, its construction will have been funded by the global financial system. If it all comes together, the Dongtan project will show that the heirs of chairman Mao can produce a genuine synthesis of economic development, environmental responsibility and financial profitability.
By 2040, Chongming Island will link China's biggest city, Shanghai, with the neighbouring province of Jiangsu to form a new industrial hinterland and become China's main financial and commercial gateway to the world.
It is part of a futuristic plan to develop thousands of square miles of the mouth of the Yangtse, which includes the building of a deep-sea harbour for Shanghai some 30kms out in the East China Sea. This is the biggest single development anywhere in the world, bigger even than the Beijing Olympics.
(continue next message)
|
| « Last Edit: Jan 12th, 2006, 10:07am by Carrie Ma » |
 Logged |
|
|
|
Carrie Ma
BBS Member
BBS God
Gender:
Posts: 390
|
|
Re: Shanghai Dongtang turn into a "eco-city"
« Reply #1 on: Jan 12th, 2006, 10:03am » |
Quote Modify
|
(continue)
Dongtan is the prestige project at the heart of this grand plan, and is largely the brainchild of one man: Peter Head, the director of British-based engineering consultancy Arup. Head was awarded an OBE for his work on Britain's 2012 Olympics bid, which in turn came out of the work he had done for the Chinese on Beijing's 2008 games.
Head admits the project is something of a personal crusade. 'Dongtan is the best hope we have for producing a sustainable urban way of life. Somebody, somewhere has got to face up to the challenge, and I believe this project is a blueprint for the way we should be living,' says Head, who got the final go-ahead at a meeting of the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC) project last month.
'Dongtan will be the turning point in China's frenetic urban growth, incorporating all the economic, social and environmental principles, to reduce the impact on nature and provide a model for future development across China and East Asia. It will be a post-industrial sustainable city of the highest quality,' he says.
The SIIC, controlled by the municipal government of the city, is China's biggest developer, and has been quoted on the Hong Kong stock market since 1996. It is in the process of preparing a multi-billion dollar prospectus for the Dongtan investment, effectively inviting the rest of the world to join the great experiment.
Chongming, and the Dongtan peninsula that forms its eastern tip, are controversial sites. The island, formed - comparatively recently in geological terms - by the silting up of the Yangtse estuary, is mainly farmland, and has provided a way of life for its peasant inhabitants, exporting agricultural produce to feed Shanghai's demanding millions.
During the Cultural Revolution, it was the destination for thousands of Shanghai's intellectuals and 'bourgeois elements' who were exiled to back-breaking forced labour in the countryside to learn anew from the 'toiling masses'. Chongming's other great import was the human nightsoil that made its way across the river, and was the main source of fertiliser for the island's farmers.
Dongtan, meanwhile, was virtually uninhabited except for small fishing communities along its expanding coastline (the island grows by 25 feet each year due to silt deposits) and for the thousands of birds that made
its wetlands a stopover on their enormous migration journeys. Dongtan is designated an international wildlife reserve, administered by the Shanghai authorities, which adds to the sensitivity of building in such an environment.
Head admits to 'nightmare moments', when the prospect of ruining an ecologically unspoilt area occurs to him, but he is determined that developers can keep it under control. 'An industrial revolution, on the scale we saw in Britain 200 years ago, is not sustainable in hina, and the Chinese realise it. They can see the socio-economic problems that follow huge economic growth rates, and realise they have to overcome them,' he says.
In any case, he believes the long-term benefits of the Dongtan project will outweigh any short-term risks.
(continue next message)
|
|
Logged |
|
|
|
Carrie Ma
BBS Member
BBS God
Gender:
Posts: 390
|
|
Re: Shanghai Dongtang turn into a "eco-city"
« Reply #2 on: Jan 12th, 2006, 10:03am » |
Quote Modify
|
(continue)
Environmental considerations are key to the whole project, and have been agreed with the SIIC and the powerful municipal authorities of Shanghai. The blueprint for the new eco-city reads like an environmental group's wish-list.- Dongtan will be energy self-sufficient, with all its transport, residential and commercial buildings powered by a combination of wind, sun and other renewable energy sources.
- Electric and hydrogen-cell carswill be the main forms of transport on the island site.
- In principle, Dongtan will also be self-sufficient in food, with Chongming's farmers encouraged to use organic agricultural methods where possible.
- There are strict criteria for safeguarding Dongtan against flooding, erosion or over-exploitation.
The scale of the development is ambitious. The deal signed in outline at last month's Shanghai meeting proposes an initial 'demonstrator' habitation for 50,000 people to be built by 2010, when Shanghai will become the centre of world business attention, with its international Expo. This is projected to rise to 500,000 by 2040, by which time the total population of Chongming island will be many millions (currently
around 2m.)
It will be like Manhattan island stretched to three times its surface area and shipped to China. But it will not have the famous Big Apple skyline, which Shanghai has imitated - some say bettered - in its development of the city's financial district in Pudong. 'Dongtan will be a waterfront development for the 21st century,' says Shanfeng Dong, Arup's liaison executive in Shanghai. 'Pudong is to be looked at; Dongtan is to be lived in.'
The ambition is even wider than that, however. Dongtan is intended as a prototype for fully integrated urban living, with light industrial and high technology employment, recreational and residential facilities planned to the finest detail, like the availability of lakeside walkways or sunward orientation of housing.
All this must conform to a Chinese business melange of Confucianism, Daoism and communism that lays emphasis on natural harmony. One stated aim of the Dongtan project is to 'create inclusive, cohesive and tolerant communities that recognise traditional and modern Chinese and other cultural values'. It also plans for 'consistent economic progress, which recognises China's old and new economies and allows for sustainability objectives to be met.'
The meeting in Shanghai last month agreed all these principles in outline, and the SIIC is now in the process of preparing a prospectus inviting international investors to take part in the first round of public fundraising for the project. It is thought that up to £1.5bn will be raised for the demonstrator phase, with further bouts of fundraising later on. It is impossible to put a final price-tag on the project, but it will run into billions of dollars. In contrast, the budget for the Beijing Olympics - excluding infrastructure costs - is still in single-figure billions.
In addition to SIIC, there are a couple of early-round investors who have spotted Dongtan as a potentially lucrative business proposition.
One is Treasury Holdings, a Dublin-based property developer with highly developed environmental standards, which pledged a massive ��1.2bn investment in Dongtan last year. Treasury is keen to develop the leisure and recreational facilities of Chongming, which will include golf courses, hotels, restaurants and what the group refers to as an 'equine centre' - horseracing is rare in China, where gambling is illegal, though widely practised.
One feature of the eco-city's commercial activities will be
state-of-the-art medical facilities, and it is believed another private investor has been lined up to take a lead role in this area.
When the next stage of the financing is secure - probably by early spring - SIIC and Arup will go through the final stages of getting planning permission to begin the demonstrator development. Because Chongming is administered by the Shanghai municipal authorities, this
should be straightforward, and free from the controversy that has increasingly accompanied land development programmes in rural China.
The approval of the Beijing government is ultimately necessary but, as the formal agreement to proceed with the Dongtan eco-city was signed between British and Chinese representatives at Downing Street last November during the state visit of the Chinese president Hu Jintao, this, too, should be a formality.
In Britain, the Dongtan project has raised interest within government.
According to trade officials at the British consulate in Shanghai, John Prescott, deputy prime minister, and Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, are planning trips to the site early this year, and other senior government ministers have raised the question of whether an eco-city might be feasible in Britain.
It seems certain there will be others in China: the SIIC-Arup partnership is already committed to two other eco-cities, though the sites have yet to be identified.
A British trade official says: 'The Chinese have had an environmental change of heart, but there is also some money in it.'
The Dongtan project has a long way to go, but the meeting of Marxism and mammon on the mudflats of the Yangtse could yet be the start of a global eco-revolution.
(End)
|
| « Last Edit: Jan 12th, 2006, 10:05am by Carrie Ma » |
Logged |
|
|
|
|
BBS
Help
Search
Members
Login
Register
Reply
Send Topic
Print