THE pressing issue of how tomorrow’s cities should look and function has created innumerable studies that attempt to define and design the best urban models.
Professor Zhu Dajian, an eminent academic in the field at Tongji University, said the key is striking a balance between the need for economic growth and the desire for livable city environment. “The models in most studies either put too much emphasis on the economy, or vice versa,” he told Shanghai Daily in an exclusive interview in his campus office. “China really needs a scientific measure to gauge and guide its development.”
Zhu is director of the Department of Public Management at Tongji’s School of Economics and Management. He also heads the Institution of Governance for Sustainable Development at the university and was formerly a visiting scholar at Harvard, the University of Chicago and the University of Melbourne to learn international theory and practice.
Three years ago, Zhu and several of his colleagues began compiling the annual “Greenbook for the Sustainability of 35 Big Cities in China.” The publication seeks to bring scientific methodology to the planning process for sustainable urban development in China.
The Greenbook presents its results in two dimensions that separately track a city’s economic growth, social progress and ecological environment.
The premise behind this approach rests on the idea that sustainability requires the preservation of critical natural assets while at the same time acknowledging the need for a decent growth rate.
“Chinese top leaders have reckoned with this idea,” Zhu said.
President Xi Jinping once said China should turn “green mountains and blue waters” into “gold mountains and silver waters,” allowing the Chinese people to enjoy the beautiful bounty of the nation.
During the fifth Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in October, such a growth model was defined as the “green development” of a society marked by innovation, coordination, environmental friendliness, openness and sharing.
“It is like two sides of a coin, where both heads and tails should be evaluated to produce a reliable result,” Zhu said of a method that he calls “bi-hemispherical assessment.”
The results of Zhu’s studies have been interesting and sometimes unexpected.
In the past two years, “model” cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou showed relatively low scores on the “Urban Ecological Input Index” that summarizes urbanization in the ecological hemisphere.
At the same time, these megacities get high scores on the “Urban Human Development Index,” which measures urbanization in terms of the development hemisphere.
“The results are inspiring,” Zhu said. “They indicate the good quality of this methodology, which gives an objective and comprehensive assessment of urbanization.”
The data for the study are collected according to criteria advocated by the United Nations, with some minor modifications to reflect the unique reality of China.
For example, per capita GDP, average life expectancy and the average year of education completed have been added to the “Urban Human Development Index.”
The “Urban Ecological Input Index” comprises nine basic indicators, such as use of water, energy and land resources, as well as discharge of polluted water and solid waste, and levels of air pollution. All data are obtained from authoritative government publications, then standardized to match the international par for easier comparison.
In the Greenbook, second-tier cities like Xiamen, Qingdao, Tianjin and Wuhan are leaders in sustainability, with high scores in both hemispheres. The worst marks go to Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the far northwest, which showed poor performance in both ecological and economic measures.
“The study also offers policy solutions,” Zhu said. “The value of this study is that it categorizes cities … and for each category, we have different policy advice.”
For cities like Shanghai, the suggestion is to increase the preservation of natural assets, while retaining momentum in economic growth and social progress.
For cities like Urumqi, the recommendation is to adopt the policies of good model cities, such as Xiamen in southeastern China, where a balance is struck between reasonable growth and affordable consumption of natural resources. Or, in other words, avoid the “pollution first, treatment later” model.
“When cities pursue economic growth without a bottom line, growth and ecology become enemies fighting one another,” Zhu said. “But when cities pursue sustainability, growth and ecology can complement each other.”
The third edition of the Greenbook, which is fast becoming a beacon for policy-makers designing the cities of tomorrow, is due out next month. It will be published and released in partnership with the United Nations Development Program, Zhu said.
