The New Skills Needed
Arup’s team working on the Dongtan project in China is 100-strong and masterplanning has been ongoing for three years, with construction due to start in early 2009.
Plans for the East Village and East Lake
Skills in demand include:
• building technologies for low energy buildings
• transport technologies
• waste technologies
• water management technologies
• team-building and its multi-disciplinary optimisation
• development of renewable energy technologies
The scale of Chinese cities makes it important to achieve rapid innovation in waste, transport, energy planning and delivery. The eco-city commitment marks an important first step, however the growth of older cities will pose a challenge. As people aspire to larger houses and to own and drive around in cars, energy and CO2 consumption will increase elsewhere and could cancel out the savings made in the eco-cities.
“At Dongtan ... they will not only generate all their own power from sun,
wind, water, biofuels and recycled waste - they are also planning
double-decker organic farms. In this way, land lost to agriculture
through building will be replaced with what they call, rather
disappointingly, "plant factories". Super-intensive agriculture plus
organic techniques - now there's a challenge. Meanwhile, public
transport will be of the zero-emission hydrogen-powered variety while
even the air miles clocked up by the design team before it is built are
being carbon-offse.: All those flights will result in a new
hydroelectric power plant, one hopes of the variety that does not
destroy too much wildlife.
Dongtan - which will be well under way by the time the next big World
Expo takes place in Shanghai in 2010, and which will grow to hold a
population of half a million by 2050 - will be a high-density city, but
one that is resolutely low-rise. Buildings will bristle with
vegetation. Wind turbines and solar panels will be everywhere. And the
area is wet, which helps. Dongtan, with all its waterways, will be a
modern Venice, the prototype for a further three such new cities in China.”
Peter Head, director, Arup
|
Topics associated with this project
Climate change, Eco-town, Energy, Environmental, Housing, International, Planning, Transport