Scale: Part 3 - Environmental Concerns in China

The recent development of China’s cities provides lessons for densification that is being promoted for American cities. The trick, of course, is improvement without losing the beneficial qualities of the past. Clear-cutting neighborhoods for new development loses the rich texture of a city with historic neighborhoods. Just as a tree plantation cannot replicate a forest, ecological diversity is hard to design and must be allowed to grow. Nevertheless, China’s determination to densify their cities has required and received governmental commitment to build mass-transit systems and improve roads, to upgrade water and sewer systems, and to provide electrical power. What has been lost are the bicycles and the civic scale this kind of transport supports.

Another consequence is the pollution of the air and waterways. China has rich deposits of coal, unfortunately the soft bituminous kind that burns producing more carbon dioxide pollution. A vast majority of China’s power is supplied by coal fuel, both at the local and industrial scale. Mostly unregulated, coal mining is unsafe and many injuries occur. Air quality is reported on daily weather reports on a scale from excellent to severely polluted with all fifteen major cities identified with ambiguous color coding that shows a moderately polluted to worse range, along with a website that is inaccessible outside the country. In cities the smog is constant and many wear masks almost as a fashion accessory. Many more develop a “Beijing cough” after a few days in the city, and the countryside provides little relief.
  

China's climate includes seasonal monsoons. Attempts to control coastal flooding has prompted channelizing the three primary rivers of which the Three Gorges Dam has been successful in this regard, but like all civil engineering projects, they require a commitment for maintenance. Pressure to industrialize, especially in nearby villages with cheap labor, have allowed manufacturing practices that pollute. Given lax inspections and the lack of judicial recourse, violations occur. For instance, the Shanghai Daily reported on 18 April 2013 that villagers east of Zhejiang province in Lanxi City have protested that an aluminum factory has caused excessive pollution and fluoride poisoning resulting in a cancer cluster, but the government response was that “waste discharges meet national environmental standards.”

The economic drivers that have produced the recent “modernization” have occurred on the back of the Chinese people to the detriment of the environment. John Bryan Starr in Understanding China (2010, page 214) notes that sixteen million areas of arable land has become desert due to deforestation since 1949 with more lost to converting farmland for development and its supporting infrastructure. Given the limited amount of land suitable for farming and the growing population, it is alarming to think of the ecological and social consequences of China’s recent development. One landscape architecture firm, Turenscape in Beijing, is responding with public projects that clean polluted water in un-channelized waterfront parks with plants including productive crops. The health of the Chinese people and the global impact of failing to responsibly manage natural resources will be the true evidence of progress in this ancient, fascinating and important country.

Scale: Part 2 - Public Space in China

Having been to the three largest cities in China, several impressions are consistently revealing about life in public spaces in these dense cities. While some effort to preserve historic neighborhoods, such as Beijing’s hutongs, is supported with on-going repairs and tourist related services, the way of life is essentially gone. For centuries multiple generations lived in courtyard compounds with social structures based on intimate proximity, impossible to duplicate in typical apartment complexes. Public parks at historic sites are sometimes restricted for use by retired people at prime times, who gather there to practice dancing and singing, and to exercise. The grass lawns are closed off, but paved areas in the shade are popular and these provide space for the social activities that have survived.

Clearly re-planting projects are part of infrastructure development. Highways are bordered by dense vegetation with the look of American office park design that will improve as it matures. These landscapes block views of the surrounding developed areas or of community gardens on land that will eventually be developed. Green roofs are rare, but most new buildings have flat roofs and may be added later. Streets, such as in Shanghai’s French Concession, are lined with mature sycamore trees that provide welcome relief from the overwhelming scale of the nearby business districts.

Historic gardens, such as the 16^th-century Yu Yuan Gardens in Shanghai, are open to the public and have attracted preservation of the surrounding district made up of low stone and brick buildings used for shopping boutiques and restaurants. Housing in these charming neighborhoods is extremely expensive, and most people live in the high-rise apartments, discussed in Part 1 of this series.

The scale of these public spaces contrasts sharply with recent construction of tall skyscrapers whose height rivals any throughout the world. What is missing in the city is the parochial scale as discussed by Lyn Lofland. Housing developments are linked together by the mass-transit system that most use because owning a car is expensive and the traffic is perpetually congested. Because the government subsidizes housing, developers have little incentive to provide the amenities needed to support social communities. People new to the neighborhood get to know each other in several ways. Taking children to playgrounds brings people with shared interests together, but only the elementary schools are local and many children are sent to boarding schools for higher education. Dog walkers are unusual. Public parks are provided on a city not neighborhood scale. Perhaps the government is leery of unsupervised public gathering for protest that might occur in such places, or it is just too soon. One type of public space might be used to greater advantage is the network of elevated pedestrian walkways that allow people to safely cross the new highways, common in dense areas. Getting from here to there need not be the shortest distance between two points. Meeting others for tea, much like the community life of coffee shops in the United States, might be the needed public space that initiates a “there” to these dense civic places.

Scale: Part 1 - The Cities of China

No research, visual or statistical, prepares even an architect for the scale of China’s cities. Compared to the United States, China has nearly the same land mass (3.7 million square miles to 3.6), with similar latitudes. The great difference – and ultimately a key difference – is that 40 percent of the United States is cultivatable land compared to only 10 percent of China. Population statistics are also quite incomparable. As of the end of 2012, China had over 19 percent of the world’s population at 1.354 billion people; today, the US has less than a quarter of that at 4.46 percent at almost 316 million. The people of China are concentrated along the east coast and three major interior rivers, and seven cities have populations that exceed the largest city in the United States. Looking at the panoramic view from a hotel room in the center of any of these cities shows a surrounding skyline that is vast, continuous and overwhelming.

China’s economic policies of the past two decades have led to mass migration from rural villages to urban centers. Relocation programs, either due to building the Three Gorges Dam requiring the relocation of 1.3 million people or for personal advancement, has prompted massive construction projects. The national government has invested heavily in urban infrastructure with elevated highways and mass-transit systems to move people from the fringe housing developments to business and manufacturing centers. Unfortunately, the “magic mile” of walkable communities is interpreted as a crowded subway commute of a “magic hour.”

Developers have converted historic city courtyard housing and aging five-story apartment buildings constructed by the Soviets in the mid-twentieth century to 20 to 30 story concrete apartment buildings. Taking a single design, 10 or 20 buildings are erected simultaneously in clusters reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City concept. Of course, he never imagined that the occupants would dry their laundry on the balconies and stick HVAC units on the wall outside their bedrooms. The flats are unfurnished and include no doors, finishes, cabinets, appliances or fixtures leaving that expense to the new occupants. Typically, even new developments look like vertical public housing slums. Scandals over bribery and the corruption of construction inspectors provide little confidence that structural designs for seismic activity were followed.  

Socialist policies mean that housing, education, medical and retirement needs are subsidized. Documented workers are entitled to these services; undocumented people, if unneeded for menial labor, are involuntarily shipped back to their villages. Car license plates are rationed, electricity is expensive, and the Chinese spend four times their annual per capita on food when compared to the United States. Advancing through the educational system depends on passing rigorous exams to enter middle, high school and the university. The country’s hope for an expanding middle class is based on graduating 6 million students annually of which 1 million enter the Communist Party and work as civil servants running the government. These exams test students on three critical areas of study: Chinese, mathematics and English. The taxicab drivers may be illiterate, but the professionals speak English.