LINK City, a flourishing underground commercial area in Futian CBD, was designated as a model rail transport street in China due to its booming business Friday, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported.

The title was established by the China Urban Rail Transport Association, in order to assess and set models for developing and operating rail transportation resources. For this year’s assessment, the association invited experts and third-party investigating institutions to evaluate underground commercial streets around China over the last six months.

Link City stood out among all of the candidates and became the first model street of its kind in China. The street was also the first of its kind to have an intellectual property mascot and set “facilitating innovation and entrepreneurship” as its corporate strategy.

The commercial area, founded five years ago, covers a length of 1.5 kilometers. It is calculated that the street has directly provided more than 3,000 occupational posts and indirectly offered jobs to nearly 10,000 people.

Each day, over 100,000 people visit the commercial area, bringing more than 5 billion yuan (US$736,000) in social value to the street. Some original brands that started on the street grew larger and even opened up branch stores around China.

So far, Link City has gained development and operation rights for underground commercial spaces at Shangmeilin Station of the Shenzhen Metro and some Metro properties in other cities such as Wuxi and Nanchang.

According to the Daily report, another strategy the commercial street pioneered was turning itself into an incubator space for technology startups, which helped it achieve high scores in the nationwide assessment.

(Zhang Qian)