Dashed Dreams of an Eco-City: The Failure of Dongtan Eco-City on Chongming Island, China

The following post comes courtesy of Global Site Plans' The Grid. CNU and Global Site Plans recently teamed up to syndicate Grid content, as its contingent of writers presents a view on the opportunities and issues of urbanization all across the world. CNU will carry select posts from the Grid direct on the CNU Salons.

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 What was supposed to have been a perfect model of eco-design has come up rather short as plans for Dongtan, an eco-city on Chongming Island, have since disappeared. Located just 25km from Shanghai, the sustainably designed city was to have been partially completed by 2010, with the majority of the city finished by 2020. Instead, questions of who would fund the project and a corruption scandal have halted construction indefinitely.

Planned to have housed 500,000 people by 2050, the city had hopes of being completely carbon neutral and using 100% renewable energy. A sustainableapproach to increasing suburbanization, the car-free, carbon-neutral city was designed to produce its own electricity.

Plans for this eco-city were done mainly out of necessity. With millions moving to urban areas like Shanghai every month, Chinese cities will need to develop new urban strategies to accommodate these new residents.

The future timeline for this project remains uncertain. Although construction has been halted indefinitely, it may still be too early to give up hope entirely. A bridge and tunnel linking the island to Shanghai opened in 2009, making the island more easily accessible from Shanghai, a sign that future development may still be in the works.

Others don’t believe that Dongtan was ever meant to be built and was just another example of greenwashing. There are also questions about whether the city will be as sustainable as it claims. Although Arup, the design firm attached to the project, plans to protect the existing wetlands, the island has an expansive and biodiverse wetlands.

Dongtan is not the only eco-city in the works. Other projects like Mascar City in Abu Dhabi and Tianjin Eco-City outside Beijing, China are being constructed in order to house the growing number of urban residents. Will sustainable eco-cities become the suburbanization of the future? Should cities invest in these projects or focus on improving residential options in existing cities? Many questions remain, not only for Dongtan, but for the future of eco-cites.

Do you think eco-cities built in peri-urban areas could be a potential sustainable solution to urbanization in rapidly developing cities?

To read the original post, written by Sophie Plottel, visit Global Site Plans.