Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    ON Feb. 21, China unveiled a guideline on urban planning in a bid to address the problems accompanying the rapid urbanization and explosive city expansion.

    The document was released at the Central Urban Work Conference held last December by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council. This was the first meeting of such nature since 1978, when only 18 percent of China’s population lived in cities. That figure reached about 50 percent by the end of last year.

    China’s fast economic growth and runaway urbanization drive have resulted in urban plights such as increasing pollution, traffic gridlock, insufficient and inconvenient public services, monotonous building styles and ubiquitous bizarre-looking buildings, and worst of all, the close proximity of hazardous materials to residential neighborhoods. One of the worst examples of the dangers that could be lurking in every city was the deadly explosions at a container storage facility located in a populous area in Tianjin on Aug. 12, 2015. At least 165 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured.

    The cause of the tragedy is clear now. Safety regulations that required such storage facilities to be located at least 1 km from residential areas were not followed, and local inhabitants had never been informed of the danger.

    To reverse the trend of disorganized and shortsighted urban planning and construction, the guideline on urban planning calls for greater oversight by city legislative bodies and harsher punishments for anyone breaching urban planning regulations. Any modification or revision of local urban planning policy should also be approved by legislators first, the document says.

    Based on the document, buildings that are not economical, functional, aesthetically pleasing and environmentally friendly will be forbidden while construction techniques that generate less waste and use fewer resources, such as prefabricated buildings, will be encouraged.

    The document has been hailed as a significant step forward in building ideal cities for the fast-growing urban population of China, though some specific articles are controversial.

    The document says that no more gated residential communities will be built in the future while existing ones, which are common across China, will open to the public gradually to make better use of the land and road networks. Many residents have expressed their concerns about their safety in an open community.

    Urban planning experts say the worries are unnecessary, clarifying that the gated communities mentioned in the document refer to the ones covering an area as vast as tens of thousands of square meters or even several square kilometers, not the ones with a few blocks of apartment buildings that we are familiar with. The move, experts explained, will be in the interest of all citizens.

    Anyway, no one is opposed to an ideal and livable city.

    People have been trying to develop ideal cities since ancient times. In the West, the concept dates at least to the period of Plato, whose Republic is a philosophical exploration of the notion of the “ideal city.”

    In China, attempts to build ideal buildings and towns with emphasis on perfect harmony between people and nature have never ceased. Many ingenious designs, techniques and tools were used to make daily life more convenient and environmentally friendly. Such feats still look wonderful even today.

    Of course, the “ideal” varies with time and places. Given China’s national conditions in the modern context, what makes an ideal city should include being sustainable, environmentally friendly, pro-people, forward-looking, convenient and high-tech-geared.

    That said, challenges facing Chinese city planners and designers are tremendous because an unprecedented urbanization program is under way at a time when modern technology is advancing daily.

    It’s extremely difficult to plan and build a city that can not only satisfy people’s present needs, without destroying history, but can also accommodate the country’s needs 50 or 100 years from now.

    In this sense, no individual can predict what an ideal city would look like, but you will never go wrong with well-designed and well-executed guidelines.

    (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)