Chinese walker

The document now facing me, from the Kunming City Planning Commission Office, in the south-west Chinese province of Yunnan, is certainly worth a read. It states that in project planning for residential apartments under 40 storeys in downtown Kunming, “approval in principle is no longer required except as regards urban landscape considerations, requirements for aircraft clearance and controls on land construction sites%26hellip; detailed plans for %26lsquo;urban village` remodelling will, in line with this, undertake a comprehensive reorganisation.”

Let`s stop for a moment and consider the contemporary landscape of greater Kunming. There are now 330 areas classified as “urban villages” covering 18 square kilometres in the main city construction zone. Imagine, if you will, all this “remodelling” of the urban villages as a form of “strip integration”, which draws in neighbouring localities – even those that were outside the initial demolition and remodelling plans. A recent example is the urban village renovation of Panjiawan in Kunming. Although this urban village is only 39 acres (0.16 square kilometres), the area to be demolished is 129 acres (0.5 square kilometres).

Imagine now the picture of this future city: high-rise towers; every residence over 40-storeys high; the concrete forests and steel cities interspersed, of course, with green space and plazas. Imagine the legendary “Oriental Geneva”, the “bridgehead to south-east Asia”, the “Radiant Garden City Beautiful”.

This is no isolated case, but increasingly a model of Chinese urbanisation. I call this sort of city renovation and urbanisation “urban dinosaurisation”. The dinosaurs refer the enormous bodies formed by this urban expansion; to the unsustainability of this urban development; and also to their eventual, dinosaur-like fate. It can be fairly predict%26shy;ed that the cost of these dinosaurs will not be borne by those who created them: the city leaders, planners and real-estate developers. These people will leave early – and the price will be paid by those living in these areas.

It`s not going too far to call such cities dinosaurs. While satisfying a modernist desire to gaze over the human realm from some cosmic vantage point, such high-rise communities are hollow and will extinguish the intrinsic vitality of the city. In the cities of China today, vitality comes from three types of residential areas. First, traditional neighbourhoods like the hutongs of the Xuanwu and Chongwen districts of old Beijing. These have centuries of history; the city`s life was formed in these neighbourhoods, with their mixtures of residents always in view of each other. Second are the work unit communities formed in the 1950s. While the architecture of these areas is unremarkable, they have, like the older city neighbourhoods, social capital and vitality.

Third are the urban villages: city communities formed in a village framework. These are completely stigmatised in the current urban remodelling movement. However, as serious researchers and those who have lived in these places will attest, they are the same as the first two types of urban community in terms of being places that are functionally intact and orderly (albeit not in the eyes of city leaders), and whose residents are in close contact in a liveable environment.

It is these places that extend the life of the city, and promote the vitality that the modernist dinosaur city wants to extinguish. Can communities in the dinosaur city promote urban vitality? When a host of such communities emerged in the 1990s, planners designed ideal social spaces for these places, such as democratic homeowners` committees and market-oriented property management systems. But still the most fundamental problem of these communities remains: the impossibility of the community to organise and the difficulty of forming committees of homeowners, leaving residents to skirmish with – rather than resist – the property companies.

Superficially, these areas look bright, but apart from minority groups of residents brought in from work-units that bought their housing collectively, they cannot properly solve residents` or management problems. A great deal of social scientific investigation has confirmed this view. Such modernised communities need several decades of people living among each other before enough vitality gathers to change them from being empty giants.

Urban dinosaurisation is reflected further in the city`s external expansion and its engulfing of land and other resources to sustain it. Let me stay with Kunming as a case I know well. The area of the entire Dianchi Lake watershed is 2,920 square kilometres. Counting the plains and basin alone, the area is only 590 square kilometres. According to official plans, the central city area of Kunming should have been confined to 164.25 square kilometres by 2010, but the main urban region of Kunming already reached 249 square kilometres in 2008.

The consequences of such “urban dinosaurisation” have already been expressed by experts on resources and ecosystems. Following this year`s devastating drought in the Kunming region, experts pointed out that one of its causes was the rapid advance of urbanisation in the Dianchi Lake Basin, which has brought the capacity of its supporting water resources to the limit.

A muck-rake farmer by Dianchi Lake

Another example is the insertion of the north-south Kunluo Road, which extinguished “muck-rake” farming – where crops are planted in raked, muddy flats – along the east coast of Dianchi Lake: the route of the road destroyed irrigation system built in the 1950s, so that a place that in former times maintained high yields has been turned into one of alternating droughts and floods. Such roads also intensify urban expansion: once there is a road, property-development frenzy ensues. Kunming in the pre-drought years was already one of the nation`s 14 most water-stressed cities. This may seem ridiculous, but it`s true.

My warnings about urban dinosaurisation were once based on the notion that the dinosaur-makers entertained a na%26iuml;ve, modernist aesthetic. But I see that, in fact, all the 40-storey buildings imagined by these people are nothing but heaps of silver reaching to the sky, from the huge land transfer fees arising from urban village demolitions to the astronomical prices of the buildings and the so-called political merit that results. Such are the dreams of the dinosaur creators.

So, how can we put an end to urban dinosaurisation? Let`s start by giving up on the utopia described by Jane Jacobs as the “Radiant Garden City Beautiful”. The violence of profit-driven demolition and construction finds legitimacy within the enchantment of this utopian ideal, while the world of daily life of countless people meets its end. Let us hold fast to each “decrepit” neighbourhood and compound, and firmly reject the hard and soft violence of this silvery utopia. If we take this stand, we can stop the spread of the urban dinosaurs.

Zhu Xiaoyang is associate professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Peking University.

This article first appeared in Southern Weekend. It is translated and reproduced here with permission.

Homepage image by Philou.cn

As I was being driven through Tel Aviv from my hotel to a conference center a few years ago, I could not help but note the overwhelming presence of cars and parking lots. Tel Aviv, expanding from a small settlement a half-century ago to a city of some 3 million today, evolved during the automobile era. It occurred to me that the ratio of parks to parking lots may be the best single indicator of the livability of a city%26mdash;an indication of whether the city is designed for people or for cars.

The world`s cities are in trouble. In Mexico City, Tehran, Bangkok, Shanghai, and hundreds of other cities, the quality of daily life is deteriorating. Breathing the air in some cities is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes per day. In the United States, the number of hours commuters spend going nowhere sitting in traffic-congested streets and highways climbs higher each year, raising frustration levels.

Pollution in Shanghai, photo by wjpbennett

In response to these conditions, we are seeing the emergence of a new urbanism. One of the most remarkable modern urban transformations has occurred in Bogot%26aacute;, Colombia, where Enrique Pe%26ntilde;alosa served as Mayor for three years, beginning in 1998. When he took office he did not ask how life could be improved for the 30 percent who owned cars; he wanted to know what could be done for the 70 percent%26mdash;the majority%26mdash;who did not own cars.

Pe%26ntilde;alosa realized that a city that is a pleasant environment for children and the elderly would work for everyone. In just a few years, he transformed the quality of urban life with his vision of a city designed for people. Under his leadership, the city banned the parking of cars on sidewalks, created or renovated 1,200 parks, introduced a highly successful bus-based rapid transit system, built hundreds of kilometres of bicycle paths and pedestrian streets, reduced rush hour traffic by 40 percent, planted 100,000 trees, and involved local citizens directly in the improvement of their neighbourhoods. In doing this, he created a sense of civic pride among the city`s 8 million residents, making the streets of Bogot%26aacute; in this strife-torn country safer than those in Washington, D.C.

Enrique Pe%26ntilde;alosa observes that “high quality public pedestrian space in general and parks in particular are evidence of a true democracy at work.” He further observes: “Parks and public space are also important to a democratic society because they are the only places where people meet as equals.%26hellip;In a city, parks are as essential to the physical and emotional health of a city as the water supply.” He notes this is not obvious from most city budgets, where parks are deemed a luxury. By contrast, “roads, the public space for cars, receive infinitely more resources and less budget cuts than parks, the public space for children. Why,” he asks, “are the public spaces for cars deemed more important than the public spaces for children?”

In espousing this new urban philosophy, Pe%26ntilde;alosa is not alone. The reform he initiated in Bogot%26aacute; is being carried on by his successor, Antanas Mockus. Now government planners everywhere are experimenting, seeking ways to design cities for people not cars. Cars promise mobility, and they provide it in a largely rural setting. But in an urbanizing world there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility.

Some cities in industrial and developing countries alike are dramatically increasing urban mobility by moving away from the car. Jaime Lerner, the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, was one of the first to design and adopt an alternative transportation system, one that does not mimic those in the West but that is inexpensive and commuter-friendly. Since 1974 Curitiba`s transportation system has been totally restructured. Although one third of the people own cars, these play a minor role in urban transport. Busing, biking, and walking totally dominate, with two thirds of all trips in the city by bus. The city`s population has doubled since 1974, but its car traffic has declined by a remarkable 30 percent.

Aside from the growth of population itself, urbanisation is the dominant demographic trend of our time. In 1900, 150 million people lived in cities. By 2000, it was 2.9 billion people, a 19-fold increase. By 2007 more than half of us will live in cities%26mdash;making us, for the first time, an urban species.

In 1900 there were only a handful of cities with a million people. Today 408 cities have at least that many inhabitants. And there are 20 megacities with 10 million or more residents. Tokyo`s population of 35 million exceeds that of Canada. Mexico City`s population of 19 million is nearly equal to that of Australia. New York, S%26atilde;o Paulo, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Delhi, Calcutta, Buenos Aires, and Shanghai follow close behind.

The Author: Lester R. Brown is an internationally renowned environmentalist and author of numerous books, including the recently-released “Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble,” in which the above extract first appears. It is reproduced here with the permission of the Earth Policy Institute where Lester remains as the Founding President.

Homepage photo: Cycle lanes in Bogota, photo by Adriana Henriquez

China`s large-scale urbanisation dates back to late 1980s, when Beijing still had fields and natural wetlands. Since the 1980s, urbanisation has accelerated, with the number of cities in China`s central and coastal regions leaping from 315 to 521 from 1988 to 2000. Cities are expanding at an even faster rate than their populations. Urban land increased by 8% from 2000 to 2003, while the urban population grew by only half that figure. And now the country has become a giant building site, with almost 770 square kilometers of land being built on annually — a figure that increases by almost 6% annually.

This urban explosion is linked to an unfortunate quest for large, foreign-style cities. Cities, plazas, roads, houses – the bigger and more foreign they are, the better, whether they are needed or not. Cities are swallowing up their surroundings – particularly Beijing, which is expanding by 20 square kilometers per year and showing no sign of slowing. Economically backward cities build huge plazas, cities with no congestion build eight-lane highways, all for the sake of appearance. The trend for spacious accommodation started with Beijing officials, with the standard living area for a departmental cadre rocketing from 70 or 80 square meters to over 200. There is even competition over who has the biggest office. And buildings are built in foreign styles, leaving us with non-descript cookie-cutter cities.

This construction makes an undeniable contribution to GDP, but the ecological and social issues it causes have been ignored. The current urbanisation rate is about 40%. If China is to achieve moderate levels of development, this will rise to 60% – encroaching on even more land and using even more resources. If China`s urbanisation is to be sustainable, the country must halt excessive expansion and resolve the issues discussed below.

photo by Yuek Hahn

China is a civilisation with a 5,000-year history of ever-growing inventiveness and refinement. From 600 until 1500 CE, it was the world`s most scientifically and technologically advanced society. It led the way in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, pottery and plant breeding. It invented the magnetic compass, gunpowder, cast iron, papermaking and printing. It alternated between being a closed, inward-looking society and a very open one that sought to link up with other civilisations.

China also built the largest and most spectacular cities before the modern era, with Beijing`s population reaching 2 million as long ago as the 17th century. However, it also continued to be a land of villages and farmers. Under Mao, this trend was strongly emphasised and China became a champion of village industries, collective farms and local self-sufficiency.

All that changed after Mao`s death. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping launched China on the “Open Door Policy”, focusing on rapid economic growth, a new role for markets, investment from the west and foreign trade. The world has watched in fascination and trepidation ever since, as pictures of vast factories and gleaming skyscrapers hit our television screens. Twenty-five years ago there was hardly any foreign investment, but by 2003 it amounted to US$680 billion. In a quarter of a century, China`s gross domestic product increased tenfold, from US$147 billion to over US$1.4 trillion. Its foreign trade grew more than forty-fold, from US$20.5 billion to US$850 billion.

But while China`s decision to industrialise and to urbanise has translated into a booming economy — with western-style consumerism spreading across the country — it has also generated major pollution problems. Sulphur and nitrogen oxides have turned China`s air into smog, and urban sewage, fertiliser run-off from farms and industrial chemicals are poisoning its rivers. There is also an increasingly global dimension: with one new coal-fired power station being built every week, and with China`s car production now nudging up to that of Japan, its CO2 emissions are catching up with those of the US. However, China seems to be learning the lessons of the limits to growth a lot more quickly.

When President Hu Jintao took over in 2003, searching questions began to be asked about the trajectory of China`s development. Since then a new policy emphasis on “harmony between humanity and nature” and on building “a conservation-oriented and environment-friendly society” has emerged. In recent speeches, Chinese leaders have insisted that “economic development must consider its impact on the environment and on society”.

There is growing evidence that these messages are increasingly informing the decisions of government officials and planners. One significant development is that the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC) has commissioned the world`s first purpose-built eco-city — Dongtan. It will be built on Chongming island in the Yangtze River delta on an area three-quarters of the size of Manhattan island – 86 square kilometers. By 2010 it will be a city of 25,000 people; by 2030 the population will reach some 500,000. It is designed to be a beautiful and truly sustainable city with a minimal ecological footprint. The goal is to use Dongtan as a template for future urban design. As China is planning to build no less than 400 new cities in the next 20 years, Dongtan`s success is of crucial importance.

I have had the privilege to be working as a consultant on the Dongtan project with the global engineering and design consultancy Arup. The first phase of Dongtan Eco-City is conceived as a town consisting of three compact, pedestrian “villages”, each with its own distinct character. The city will then continue to grow as a collection of towns connected by cycle routes and public transport corridors, allowing inhabitants access to different parts of the city by tram, bus and bicycle, as well as on foot. The aim is to ensure that people will have to walk for no more than seven minutes from any part of the city to reach a bus or tram stop.

Dongtan`s design is based on the principle that all its citizens can be in close contact with green open spaces, lakes and canals. Its buildings will be highly energy-efficient, and the city will be largely powered by renewable energy — the wind, the sun and biomass.

Most of Dongtan`s waste output will be recycled and composted. The bulk of its organic wastes will be returned to the local farmland to help assure its long-term fertility and its capacity to produce much of the city`s food needs. Chongming`s existing local farming and fishing communities will have significant new marketing opportunities with the development of Dongtan, ensuring a high degree of local food self-sufficiency and enhancing the island`s long-term environmental and social sustainability at the same time.

Ironically, Dongtan is being built on an island in the Yangtze delta that is in itself a product of environmental catastrophe. In the last 50 years, Chongming island has become the world`s largest alluvial island, doubling in size, due to eroding soil from deforestation washing down in the headwaters of the river Yangtze. Chongming has grown from 600 square kilometers in 1950 to 1,290 square kilometers today.

One reason for the decision to create a new city of minimal environmental impact on Chongming island is the existence of a huge wetland area on the southern part of the island, which is a reserve for migrating birds and the largest of its kind in China. The wetlands will be preserved and will provide a strong visitor attraction. Vegetation from the wetland reserve will also permeate Dongtan, assuring that it becomes part of the island’s natural habitat rather than a barrier to it.

With Dongtan, a sustainable future is not some distant dream, but a vision that is actually being realised. The strategy for Dongtan Eco-City is for it to be developed in several stages in the next 30 to 40 years. A tunnel and bridge, linking Chongming island to Shanghai, are already under construction. In 2010 Shanghai will host the World Expo, and the completion of the first phase of Dongtan will demonstrate that environmental sustainability and access to nature are very much part of new development in China.

Dongtan is a local project with a global perspective, designed to ensure that China will play a key role in the emergence of a world of ecologically and economically sustainable human settlements. It is becoming clear that the planet will not be able to cope if 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.2 billion Indians behave in the same way as only a few hundred million people have done so far: extracting resources, consuming and polluting. As high-population countries such as China and India catch up with Europe, North America, Japan and Australia, worldwide sustainable development is the only way to go.

Dongtan is intended to set an example. It will be a pioneering eco-city that could become a blueprint for sustainable urban development, in China itself and elsewhere in the world. It holds a promise of a high-efficiency, small-footprint urban design. By 2010, Dongtan will be a compelling model for how to build sustainable cities worldwide that may well be too persuasive to ignore.

Homepage photo by Yakobusan

The author: Herbert Girardet is author of Cities, People, Planet and chairman of Schumacher UK. Dongtan Eco-City, edited by Zhao Yan, Herbert Girardet et al., was published by Arup and SIIC in February 2006.

Reprinted with permission from Resurgence magazine www.resurgence.org

Just one hour`s ferry ride from downtown Shanghai where the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) drains into the Yellow Sea, sit three islands – Chongming, Changxi and Hangsha. Farmland flanked by conifer forests and wetlands teeming with birds dominate the landscape. Islanders there make a living selling meat, fruit and vegetables to Shanghai. Living standards, predictably, cannot compare with their wealthy neighbour, but the landscape is unspoilt.

Metropolis under strain

Shanghai suffers from the opposite. Rampant industrial development has created an abundance of wealth – local GDP is the highest in all China – but the environmental cost has been catastrophic, leaving Shanghai`s planners preoccupied with more pressing needs than fruit and vegetables.

Close to seven million tons of solid waste is produced annually and less than 5% is incinerated to produce energy. More than four million tons of raw (untreated) sewage is pumped into the surrounding rivers and the sea. The air is thick with sulphur dioxide and nearby power stations pump fine particulate matter into the atmosphere.

Heavy traffic, land and energy shortages further hamstring development. And as the population continues to rise the prohibitive costs of land means that there is nowhere else to go but “up”.

New vision of urban planning

Sustainable urban development in China depends on both the control of pollution and the protection of biodiversity. The importance of the former is now widely accepted, but the latter is still ignored, even by city planners. The wonders of Beijing`s culture are intimately linked with its biodiversity. Central Beijing has 226,000 old-growth trees, and there are 180,000 more in its suburbs. The city is surrounded by rich and diverse ecologies. Baihua Mountain and Wuling Mountain have 1,200 species of higher plants – a natural heritage more precious than any building. London, New York, Paris and Berlin do not have this kind of rich environment. Yet this natural heritage goes ignored.

The planting of trees on urban pavements has not taken ecological factors into consideration and is clearly artificial, monotonous and unreasonably spaced. In city centres, the large numbers of tall buildings and trees lining the streets prevent the flow of air, while in the suburbs more trees are needed. A sad sight, indeed, is the concreting over of the base of the trees, preventing the growth of bushes and grass. The needs of small mammals and birds are not considered. Poplars monopolise the streets of our northern cities – but where are the indigenous shrubs and plants? There is no canopy coverage and lifespan is short, with trees discarded within a couple of decades. There is no consideration of biodiversity.

Cities need to plan for long-term preservation – the older they are, the more valuable. When designing the imperial resort of Chengde, Emperor Kangxi ordered that all existing vegetation be retained. Tragically today`s city planners use only a few commercial varieties, and cities lose their native biodiversity. So some planners turn their eyes to surrounding villages and buy up large trees in great numbers. This means great business for the tree traders, but disaster for trees in rural areas. (In the worst case, rural trees literally fueled the steel-production drive of the Great Leap Forward.) The trend started in Shanghai and spread nationwide, and now almost every city beautification project ships in truckloads of large trees.

When I asked one of my Chinese hosts to give me a tour of his city`s best new housing project, I never imagined it would inspire a University of California, Berkeley, team to propose revolutionising how the Chinese develop their new communities.

We set out from the Urban Planning and Design Institute`s offices in a black diplomatic car, with a siren I quickly learned allowed us to exercise authoritative traffic privileges. Our route out of metropolitan Tianjin, China`s third-largest city, took us along a major arterial corridor to the northwest, which was clogged with traffic of a chaotic type unmatched in the U.S.

Intersections, even though signalised, presented a terrifying game of “chicken”. Cars, trucks, and buses wove through an equal number of bicyclists (often with multiple passengers or goods) and pedestrians. The dust and pollution were so intense that most bicyclists wore face masks. With siren blaring, we sped along the shoulder, past what appeared to be an unending series of developments, including a new college campus, high-tech office parks and multiple high-density housing developments. As far as the eye could see, the entire landscape seemed under construction.

The scale of infrastructure construction to support this kind of hyper-development in China is hard to imagine. It is estimated that China builds more than fifty 300-megawatt coal-fired power plants per year. California has only built 36 in the last five years. China is undertaking the largest road construction program in the world, equivalent to the US Interstate highway system begun in the 1950s. The capital and material costs of this effort are increased by the fact that, in most areas of infrastructure, China is playing catch-up.

For example, an estimated 60% of existing sewage is dumped into rivers, untreated. Not only is the cost of building sewer mains and centralised treatment plants for new development staggering, but also, without cleaning up the existing sewers, the polluted rivers magnify the challenge of delivering sanitary drinking water. Some urban planning scholars question whether the current rate of development is economically sustainable, but if it is, it is estimated that China will double the size of its built environment in the next 20 to 30 years — the equivalent of building two new Britains.

When the pollution and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the congested arteries are combined with that from the power plants required to meet the energy demands of new development, the impact on both China`s public health and on global climate change presents major challenges for the years ahead. Four-fifths of China`s largest cities have unacceptable air quality, resulting in more than 600,000 premature deaths from asthma, emphysema and lung cancer. Currently, it is estimated that China is responsible for 25% of the world`s CO2 emissions (the United States is at 30%). At its current rate of development, China is projected to surpass the US in the next few years.

Mounting scientific evidence has shown conclusively that the current cycle of global warming is not natural, but attributable directly to man-made CO2 emissions; and while the projections vary in magnitude (from 2 C to 10%26frac34; C), the projected impact of global warming on the earth`s natural systems is catastrophic. On balance, the question becomes: Can the world dramatically cut back its CO2 emissions to avoid these catastrophic scenarios? The responsibility falls on the US and China to show the way.

Fortunately, China has recognised this challenge and it has been seeking the best urban planning and design advice and concepts from around the world. Our Berkeley team was invited by the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute to assist the city of ten million residents in developing principles and prototypes for compact, transit-oriented, commuter gateway neighbourhoods promoting efficient land use, and relying more on public transportation and bicycles and less on cars. With half the population living outside Tianjin proper, the city recognised that it was necessary to build a public-transit system of underground (subway) trains, light rail and connecting buses in order to avoid the traffic congestion afflicting Beijing and Shanghai.

Having completed two of seven planned light-rail lines, the city sought advice on how to guide development around the station stops. Berkeley`s College of Environmental Design responded by forming an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students from each of its three departments — Architecture, City and Regional Planning, and Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning — to come up with design proposals that address critical real-world problems. The Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute funded the semester-long project, which included a week-long visit to the Chinese city followed by analysis and preliminary designs. In Berkeley, three Chinese scholars joined the 15-member team to help inculcate the project with the nation`s cultural and practical realities. But what unfolded during the semester was largely due to the impact of what we found during our Chinese tour.

At our destination, we passed through an entry gate, where we were saluted by two uniformed guards, and proceeded to an elegant marketing showroom complete with a scale model of the entire development and elaborate models of each unit type for sale. The plan was based on repetitive blocks of townhouses and flats; their designs were of high quality, similar to what might be seen in the Netherlands, Germany or Scandinavia.

Riverside apartments in Tianjin, photo by David Wilmot

Vehicular and pedestrian access to the housing units was provided by uniform street grids with limited parking at the units and overflow parking along a fence forming the community`s perimeter. Much attention had been paid to landscape design. Streets, sidewalks and pathways of various paving materials were shaded by an array of trees. The project also featured several small parks, schools, a small central commercial area, recreation facilities, and a lake with multiple high-rise residential towers overlooking it.

I quickly estimated the density at approximately 75 to 100 units per acre. As I explored the project with my Chinese host, who was justifiably proud of its design quality, it dawned on me that what was being sold was a gated, privatised urbanity — a carefully controlled development with an urban theme but without any of the nitty-gritty reality of the city. Moreover, the gated entry gave residents a sense of belonging to a privileged community. It was hard not to interpret this as a form of social segregation.

Our hosts showed us multiple examples of the same model throughout the city — gated superblocks within a grid of new arterial streets at approximately one-mile or 1.2-mile intervals. One opportunistic developer was already in the process of building a gated superblock on the site where we were asked to explore transit-oriented development. Immediately, we became concerned. The project under construction effectively served only the residents within the gated community, blocking pedestrian and bike access to the light-rail station for anyone else. Residents of other developments would be forced to walk or bike a mile or more to get around the first development.

I wondered: Did our Chinese hosts not see this contradiction? Were they looking for alternatives?

NEXT: What the Berkeley team proposed

Karma arrived in Lhasa in the winter of 1986, cold and hungry after a 10-day journey on the back of an open truck. His first act was to complete a circuit around the Jokhang Temple, weeping as he prostrated himself. Karma then worshipped in the temple – something all Tibetans aspire to do.

Karma stayed in Lhasa, and is now one of Tibet’s most successful businessmen. Pilgrims like Karma, who end up staying in Lhasa, form a part of Lhasa’s growing population. But a bigger spur to Lhasa’s growth has been the increase in governmental, industrial and commercial activity. An elderly Tibetan told me that in 1950, there were so few Han households that he could name them all. Nowadays, you can take 10 taxis in Lhasa, and eight or nine of the drivers will be from the mainly Han Chinese province of Sichuan.

On a mid-May afternoon I stood on a road running between the Potala Palace and the Jokhang Temple. In 10 minutes, over 100 people passed me by, but not one was wearing traditional Tibetan clothes. Some of those passers-by were Tibetan, but it was as if they had abandoned their dress and their culture.

Lhasa has already abandoned enough. When Karma first arrived, almost all traditional Tibetan buildings – religious and secular alike — were still intact. Two decades later, only one-third of the traditional-style secular buildings still stand.

“Lhasa’s personality is changing,” said Dawa Tsering, head of WWF`s Lhasa office. He told me that Lhasa`s architecture should represent the city`s unique cultural values, but local tradition is being ignored. Lhasa is being developed in the same way as Beijing or Shanghai, as part of a quest for modernisation.

Tsering admitted that tradition could not always be completely retained. For instance, traditional Tibetan buildings tend to lack light and space. But this is no reason to abandon them entirely – a redesigned interior which still retains the external appearance could make Tibetan buildings suitable for modern living.

A Tibetan sociologist, who declined to be named, said that the demise of Lhasa`s traditional architecture can be put down to the sources of investment in the city. Most funding comes from Chinese investors in faraway provinces. For instance, Jiangsu Road was built with money from eastern China`s Jiangsu province, whereas the Lhasa People’s Hospital was paid for by Jiangsu province, Beijing municipality and the Ministry of Health. Provincial and government support for infrastructure construction is no bad thing, but it’s difficult to ensure it will produce Tibetan-style buildings.

The sociologist added that in the past two decades, failures in urban planning have lead to the excessive outward expansion of the city. In 1992, Lhasa relaxed its restrictions on private construction, leading to a building boom fuelled by property developers. Many residents relocated to the outskirts of the city. A new district arose to the west of Lhasa, devoid of any Tibetan characteristics. Many Tibetans from outside Lhasa moved into the city, buying and building houses. And although these buildings do have some Tibetan characteristics, they lack any overall planning or proper sewage treatment facilities.

Over recent decades, Lhasa has been marching towards “modernisation”. According to the city government’s website, average per capita housing space has risen from 7 square metres in 1959 to 25 square metres today. Government investment has brought infrastructure construction and has funded the preservation of the Potala Palace and Lhasa`s temples. But the city has grown too rapidly, leaving sewerage, roads, electricity and telecommunications infrastructure struggling to keep up. Lhasa has recently built an up-to-date solid waste treatment plant, but there is still no such facility for sewage – which is discharged raw into the Lhasa River, known as the mother of the Tibetan civilisation.

There are also issues with the ethnic layout of the city. A survey by Peking University found that Han and Tibetan populations keep to their own districts, limiting interaction between the two groups. This segregation also affects children, who are likely to attend schools close to their own homes. Tibetan residents in the old city tend not to have Han friends or neighbours, Han people are often ill-informed about Tibetans.

Lhasa has already expanded as far as it can, so these issues will have to be resolved within the current city limits. And bringing two populations together is not as simple as adding Tibetan features to buildings. The real challenge is how a traditional culture can survive in the modern world. Karma says that the biggest threat to Tibetan culture is not the influx of Han Chinese – it’s globalisation. Businesses from Lhasa and elsewhere are turning this holy city into a marketplace. The Potala Palace and many of Lhasa`s temples have become commercialised and monks are being tempted back to a secular life. Tibetans have put away their traditional clothes, and money has become paramount as young farmers and nomads leave the land for the city lights.

People like Karma have started trying to save the city`s culture, not by rejecting Lhasa`s commercialisation, but trying to make it work for Tibetan culture, not against it.

Karma answers the phone in English, but keeps his hair in Tibetan-style braids and often wears Tibetan clothing. Most importantly, he retains his kind heart, his honesty and his Buddhist faith.

Karma is working to establish the first five-star hotel in Lhasa. In talks with the chief executive of a major international hotel chain, he requested that the proposed hotel should keep to traditional Tibetan designs, and that it should face the Potala. The American executive sneered: “Our guests want to stay in a hotel, not your Potala Palace.” But Karma retorted: “Guests will come from around the world to see Tibetan traditions – not your hotel.”

Whether this city remains sacred will be determined by people like Karma, and whether the government will adopt the same attitudes to tradition, faith and modernisation that he holds.

The author: Liu Jianqiang，born in 1969, is a senior reporter with Southern Weekend and has a long-standing interest in environmental issues.

Homepage photo by Kees %26amp; Sarah

At over three and a half kilometres above sea level, Lhasa is the world’s highest city. Many people decide to visit this enchanting place, known as the “holy city in the land of the snows”.

On July 1, 2006, the Qinghai-Tibet railway opened and crowds of people from China’s cities clambered aboard to visit the place they had dreamed of – including my friend, Tian.

Tian is a journalist with the Xinhua news agency, and had always wanted to visit Lhasa. At the end of August, Tian boarded the train to Tibet. But three days later he returned, deeply disappointed. Hotel prices had rocketed – a decent, reasonably-priced room was almost impossible to find. “And it was boring,” he added, “just the same as any Chinese city.” The tall buildings, congestion, noise and street hawkers had left his dream in ruins.

Nor is he the only one disappointed. A scientist friend from Peking University went to Lhasa in mid-August hoping to buy a Tibetan-style courtyard home – she imagined leaving behind the bustle of Beijing, sipping sweet Lhasa tea with a view of the Potala Palace. But Lhasa`s reality did not match up to her vision. Property prices had risen; the money which would previously have bought her a courtyard would only purchase a single room. Tall buildings crowded a skyline where once even four-storey structures were rare, blocking the view of Lhasa’s iconic Potala Palace.

photo by The Pocket

In the seventh century, Songtsen Gampo unified Tibet and moved the centre of political power from Shannan to the site of present-day Lhasa – pastureland at the time — and founded the powerful, slave-owning Tubo Kingdom. He also built the Jokhang Temple, Ramoche Temple and the first Potala Palace. Legend has it that Songtsen Gampo used soil carried to the site by goats to build the Jokhang Temple and the city was thus named “Resa”, from the Tibetan words for soil (re) and goat (sa). With the adoption and rise of Buddhism, the number of pilgrims rose steadily. Hotels, shops, homes and administrative centers sprung up around the Jokhang Temple, forming the circular street known as the Barkhor. As Buddhism flourished, the Tibetan people started to call the city Lhasa, which means the “holy city” or “place of the Buddha”.

In the mid-17th century, the Qing emperor authorised the Fifth Dalai Lama, Lobsang Gyatso, to consolidate his political and religious power, with Lhasa as the centre of government. The Potala Palace was rebuilt to a height of thirteen storeys – almost 120 metres — and became the residence of the Dalai Lamas, seat of their political and religious rule and a landmark on the Lhasa skyline.

The Potala Palace makes a great visual impact as you first arrive. In 1936, F. Spencer Chapman, a member of the British Government`s mission to Lhasa, wrote in Lhasa, The Holy City: “Unlike any other building in the world, the Potala has the presence of a New York skyscraper and a subtle similarity to the Pyramids of Egypt%26hellip;not only are the design and color of the building breath-taking in their beauty, it is also of enormous size. This majestic beauty can best be appreciated in the government park below the Potala.” But for Tibetans, the Potala’s impact is not merely visual. Karma, from Tibet’s Chamdo region, told me of how he wept and prayed when he first glimpsed the Potala. Many Tibetans have similar tales to tell. For them the Potala is not just a building, it is the home of their faith – and it is this which makes Lhasa holy.

It was in the 17th century that Lhasa first started to evolve into a city. Official residences, mansions, guesthouses and shops were built flanking the Barkhor, but on a small scale. As late as 1906, there was only a small residential area near the Jokhang. The city had expanded by 1935, when the “Snow Village” residential district was built in front of the Potala. But by 1950, Lhasa still had a population of only 30,000 and covered less than three square kilometres, with dirt roads and no sewers.

It was later that the process of urbanisation really started to take hold. By 1975, Lhasa covered 18 square kilometres and had a population of 100,000. According to statistics from the city government’s website, Lhasa is now 18 times the size it was in 1959, with a quarter of a million people living in the urban area (100,000 of those migrants). Locals have told me that since the opening of the railway and the arrival of many more wealthy people, the actual population has already risen far beyond that figure.

Some examples may help to illustrate the changes in the city. For instance, when Chapman visited Lhasa 70 years ago, he described seeing women dumping all kinds of rubbish in front of the Potala, forming 10-foot-high piles by the roadside. When I visited in May, the Potala was fronted by a huge, clean plaza.

But before 1959, the Potala was a solemn and sacred place. Now it is a tourist attraction. Another friend of mine from Beijing took the train to Lhasa in July. When she set foot in the Potala it wasn’t the architecture, the culture or the history that struck her – it was the hordes of tourists streaming like termites over the wooden floors. Previously, visitor numbers were limited to 850 a day in order to protect the building, but this number was raised to 1,500, and then to 2,300 visitors a day once the railway was opened – earning huge amounts of money for the Potala`s managers.

Today it is still the sight of the Potala Palace, perched on top of the Red Mountain, which heralds the traveller`s arrival in Lhasa. But as you get closer to the city it becomes lost behind modern buildings. Buildings and roads named after places in northern and eastern China roll past – Jiangsu Road, Beijing Road, Shanghai Plaza and Shangdong Mansion. You may find yourself asking whether you are in Lhasa at all.

Once a “holy city” of unique tradition, Lhasa is undergoing huge and very complex changes – some bad and some good.

NEXT: Can tradition can be balanced with development?

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Elevating the realisation of a harmonious society to the status of an over-arching strategic goal, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party approved the Decisions by the CCP Central Committee on the Major Issues of Building Harmonious Socialist Society on Oct. 11, 2006. The document identified “strengthening environmental management and protection and promoting harmony between man and nature” as an important part of building a harmonious society, and called on China to “accelerate the construction of a resource-efficient, environmentally friendly society though an emphasis on solving environmental issues that damage public health and affect sustainable development”. To achieve this strategic vision, the document also requires systematic guarantees of social equality and justice, calling for the “expansion at all levels of citizens` orderly participation in governance”. This is of profound significance for future public participation in environmental protection.

As the Decisions by the CCP Central Committee points out, China`s society is facing a number of problems that affect social harmony. Of these, increasing pressure on the environment and natural resources is one of the most prominent. Industrialisation and urbanisation have led to increasing emissions of pollutants, with the release of poisonous and harmful substances outstripping the environment`s ability to cope. China`s limited resources are being rapidly consumed. Environmental pollution is endangering public health, with one-third of the urban population breathing heavily polluted air; 300 million rural residents drinking unsafe water; and one-fifth of China`s major cities failing to meet the country`s minimum standards for drinking water.

Some believe this is a normal feature of a certain stage of development, even claiming that the environment must be sacrificed for our own interests. But the environment and our own welfare are inseparable. Pollution, exhaustion of resources and destructive development are harming our interests and already causing problems that affect social stability. Since 2002, the number of complaints made to the environmental authorities has been increasing by 30% annually, reaching over 600,000 in 2004, while the number of mass incidents of social unrest caused by environmental pollution has increased by an average of 29% a year. It is clear that a lack of harmony between man and environment affects social stability and the construction of a harmonious society. %26shy;%26shy;

An ever-increasing number of people are coming to realise that the environmental problems facing China result from an imbalance between economic growth and environmental protection, while our policy-making favours economic expansion over the environment. This has led central government to put forward a scientific view of development designed to change the current GDP-centred model of growth and realise balanced sustainable development. But in practice, local governments have failed to find that balance, with the economy still trumping the environment. For example, legally binding targets for cutting power consumption and pollution have been set, but statistics for the first half of 2006 show that both continue to increase.

Clearly, relying purely on policy and targets to achieve balance is inadequate, as is merely holding the ideal of sustainable development. Because policy-makers favour development, we need to understand that development projects provide direct, short-term financial benefit for certain authorities and individuals, while environmental protection prevents long-term harm and protects the interests of weaker groups. Environmental law enforcement is weak, and ignoring it incurs lower costs than observing it. If we want to change this situation, we need to put new systems in place that will allow a broader range of interest groups to participate in the policy-making process.

The Decisions by the CCP Central Committee describes the importance of systems of public participation in building a harmonious society. The document says: “Social equality and justice are basic requirements for a harmonious society, and the system must ensure them,” and goes on to call for “expansion at all levels of citizens` orderly participation in politics, ensuring the people`s legal management of national affairs, the economy, culture and social affairs. Promotion of rational and democratic policy-making, strengthening open government, ensuring citizens` rights to be informed, to participate, to express themselves and to supervise.”

The orderly participation proposed in the document brings together government, business and the public, and can create a consensus for the participation of all sections of society in environmental protection. Environmental protection requires public participation – informed participation by all groups, protecting their own environmental interests – which ultimately will protect the environment overall. This participation must take place in an orderly fashion and on a legal basis; our society lacks a historical tradition of public participation, and there is a lack of experience in organising and promoting it. As the Decisions by the CCP Central Committee points out, we are currently experiencing “unprecedented social reform, bringing great vitality to China`s growth, but also a range of conflicts and problems”. China`s society lacks resilience, and social disorder is of no help in either solving environmental problems or achieving sustainable development.

This emergence of the “orderly participation” model is by no means sudden; it builds on real advances in public participation made in recent years. Particularly worth mentioning are the valuable lessons public participation in the environmental field has provided. With the Environmental Impact Assessment Law`s establishment of the principle that “the state encourages organisations, experts and the public to participate in appropriate ways in environmental impact assessments” and the detailed requirements for openness of information put forth in the State Environmental Protection Administration`s Provisional Guidelines on Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessments, the policy and legal foundation for public participation in the field of environmental protection is already in place. Moreover, the preliminary implementation of public hearings during assessments and the beneficial participation trials by environmental groups in environmental legislation and impact assessments demonstrate that the public are willing to participate in the management of environmental affairs in a legal, rational and orderly manner.

However, the implementation of public participation in the environmental field over recent years shows us that due to various limitations, conditions are not yet ripe for full public participation. But, we can start with the open publication of environmental information. This is a precondition for public participation. If the public do not have this information and are unable to acquire data on environmental issues, how are they to judge when their participation is needed? How can they participate effectively? Policies and laws on the publication of environmental information are improving. Under the guidance of the State Council`s Outline for Promoting the Implementation of Rule of Law, and in accordance with Environmental Protection Agency regulations, there have been notable advances in the openness of environmental information — and China`s society is ready for even more.

The Decisions by the CCP Central Committee made specific stipulations on openness of information, particularly environmental information. To build a service-orientated government and strengthen social management and public services, the document emphasises the need to “promote open government, accelerate the building of e-government, promote IT [information technology] in public services, promptly publish public information, create conditions beneficial for public life and participation in economic and social activities.” It also calls for widening the channels by which the public can express their opinions, providing a range of platforms for communication, and bringing the pursuit of the public interest within systematic and legal channels. On improving environmental-protection law and management, it specifically requires “improving environmental testing and regular publication of information on the state of the environment”.

Public participation is realised by giving the public the right to be informed, the right to participate and the right to legal relief – that is, allowing interest groups to be informed about the environmental and social impact of policy decisions, to pass on their concerns to the policy-makers, and to seek legal relief when their right to participate is denied. Some worry that widespread participation could slow the policy-making process, increase costs and affect economic growth. But, in fact, the flow of information, equal dialogue and compromise-seeking all help to internalise the external costs of growth and create a fair-market environment. Public participation will change the cost-benefit analysis of projects, hindering exploitative development and benefiting projects which conserve power and resources — thereby promoting the development of the service industry and therefore a change in the model of economic growth.

Given China`s current social and economic circumstances, we must balance the vastly different needs of economic growth and environmental protection. But who will make the choices? How will those choices be made? In accordance with the Decisions by the CCP Central Committee`s requirement for greater public participation, we should make use of the public`s environmental knowledge and create a new environmental management system that gives all interest groups an equal opportunity to express their opinions and pursue their interests. We should trust that an informed public will not choose a growth model that will seriously damage their own health and safety and ruin the environment and resources that their children and grandchildren will rely on. Their orderly participation is the only way to ensure a balance between economic growth and environmental protection.

Ma Jun`s book China`s Water Crisis (1999) was described in Time magazine`s “100 People Who Shape Our World” as China`s “first great environmental call to arms”. He is the director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and an environmental consultant for Sinosphere Corporation.