An aerial view of Xinglong Lake in the heart of Chengdu Tianfu Park City, a model for China’s plan to build greener cities.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergChina Is Building Green Cities, But Struggling to Find Residents
- China experiments with “eco cities” to protect environment
- Planners focus on greenery rather than reducing carbon
Just outside the southwestern city of Chengdu, China is building an urban paradise bigger than Houston. Visitors are greeted by a sea of manicured grass encircling a man-made lake, dotted with water lilies, that is almost the size of New York’s Central Park.
This is Tianfu Park City, one of hundreds of “eco city” developments taking over farms and rural land in China as the government tries to accommodate the 100 million people it had planned to move from villages into urban areas by 2020. After decades of unbridled urbanization that allowed concrete high-rise suburbs to sprawl around its big cities, eating up farmland and creating pollution, China is trying to find a more sustainable way to grow and provide citizens with a better lifestyle.