Dongtan, on Chongming Island, will be the world's first carbon-neutral city built inten¬tionally. Dongtan is located at the mouth of the Yangtze River on Chongming Island, situated on 8,600 hectares (86 square kilometers) of agricultural land (three-fourths the size of Manhattan) adjacent to an internationally important wetland. The city design incorporates a 350 wide buffer zone between the city and the wetland to minimize the impact of the development. The city is planned to take up just 40 percent of the total site area with the remaining land to be used for agriculture and energy production or preserved as wetland.
Dongtan was presented at the United Nations World Urban Forum by China as an ex¬ample of an eco-city. It is the first of four such cities to be designed and built in China. The planned cities will be ecologically friendly, with no greenhouse gas (GHG) emis¬sions, and completely self-sufficient in water and energy. The city will be completed in 3 phases:
The company "Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation" (SIIC) is responsible for the Dongtan project and engineering British company ARUP was contracted in August 2005 by the company to become the lead consultant for the design and masterplan of Dongtan. The contract between the two companies was signed at 10, Downing Street in November in the presence of Tony Blair and the Chinese president Hu Jintao.
The man responsible for project Dongtan at ARUP is Roger Wood. The project was supposed to be ready for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, but in 2007, the construction hadn´t begin yet. Finally, the project wasn´t ready for 2010 and the project is currently frozen.
This project was led at the highest levels of the Chinese government because as the country which has the 20 over 30 most polluted cities in the world, it is very commited to developing a new paradigm of economic development. It was claimed that while "Shanghai has a typical ecological footprint of 5,8 global hectares per person... Dongtan eco-city will be 2,6".
A whole range of suspects has been pointed for the collapse of the overall project: the corruption of local politicians, the use of challenging technologies, lapsed planning permissions, or the greed of major international consultancies that were riding in on the Chinese urban goldrush with little regard for practical niceties1.
The plans for Dongtan began to falter in 2006, when Shanghai's former mayor Chen Liangyu Dongtan's most enthusiastic supporter was arrested for property-related fraud. In the wake of the scandal, China's Communist Party reorganized the city's leadership and planning structure, leaving Dongtan orphaned2.
Today, all references to it have been removed from both the Shanghai Expo's website as well as on Arup's website.
In order to respect its philosophy of "green city", Dongtan will use modes of transport which limit the pollution. The city is designed to propose only green mobility along its coastline.
Dongtan will be connected to Shanghai thanks to bridge and tunnel. When visitors arrive on the coast, they will park their cars and then use the specific modes of transport of the city.
For local people who are not visitors, cars with diesel and petrol will be banned from the city center. Only zero-carbon vehicles will be allowed to drive inside the city. In return, a resident will not have more than 7 minutes walking to do to take a bus or tram. The pedestrian space will be 6 times higher than in Copenhagen, the largest city in Europe aired3.
Only 40% of the space is occupied by buildings, ecological reserves and wildlife corridors are developed. A system of carpooling will be implemented. Indeed, people who want to share cars will be connected through an intranet system4.
With its important number of canals, lakes and marinas, the city Dongtan will propose a variety of recreation and transport opportunities. The circulation inside the city will combine cycle-paths, pedestrian routes, public transport which includes trams, buses and water taxis (that means small boats which will play the role of taxi by transporting small group of people).
The city will be linked by a network of pedestrian walkways. The public transports will use innovative technologies: solar powered water taxis and hydrogen fuel-cell buses. This innovative way of transporting should reduce air and noise pollution. Thanks to that, buildings will be naturally ventilated and, in turn, reduce the demand on energy. The city will also use trams because its works with electricity so it doesn´t produce greenhouse emissions. Then, motorbikes traditionally used in all the cities of the world will be replaced by electric scooters or bicycles5.
The improved accessibility in Dongtan will reduce travel distances by nearly 2 million kilometers. With the use of zero emission transportation, CO2 emissions can be reduced by 400,000 tonnes per year.
These modes of transportation will totally revolutionize life in a city. We know that in other cities, transportation play an important role in the pollution of the air and water. So it's a city that can be described as city without cars, or more specifically, poor town in cars. In this, the project is a remarkable contribution to the challenge of global warming.
The delicate nature of the Dongtan wetlands and the adjacent Ramsar site for migrating birds and wildlife has been one of the driving factors of the city's design. Only around 40% of the land area of the Dongtan site will be dedicated to urban areas (634 Ha Land Developed) and the city's design aims to prevent pollutants (light, sound, emissions and water discharges) reaching the adjacent wetland areas.
The principal Aims will be:
Developers are committed to returning the agricultural land around the city to its original wetland habitat. Farmland will be created outside of the city where food will be grown for the residents of the city. Organic waste produced by the city will be composted and returned to the farmland to assist in soil fertility and continual agricultural production. The development of techniques that increase the organic production of vegetable crops will mean that no more farmland will be required than is available within the boundaries of the site. Water will be collected, treated and recycled within Dongtan and then used to irrigate surrounding farmland. Up to 80% of solid waste will be recycled, helping to contribute to the biomass energy produced to power the city.
A new program called the Resources and Energy Analysis Program will measure the resources consumed by the Dongtan inhabitants and measure it against the environment and land needed to counteract the demand. The eco-friendly design of Dongtan has already been praised worldwide and looks set to achieve a sustainable ecological footprint.
Finally, all the buildings in Dongtan will be zero-energy or passive structures. Establishing gardens or other green vegetation on the rooftops will provide insulation and filter rainwater, thus helping to reduce energy consumption. Natural ventilation will be provided by adapting to the local microclimate and positioning individual buildings accordingly. Windows, especially those facing north, will have thermal glass to minimize the need for heating and therefore the consumption of energy.
In 2005, the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC) hired the consultancy Arup to design a city which would exclusively use sustainable energy, be self-sufficient and reduce energy consumption by 66% in relation to its neighbor Shanghai.
The plan is for Dongtan to house 500,000 people from rural areas. China faces pressing energy problems. In order to meet their increasing energy consumption they will have to focus more sharply on energy-efficient design and technology, on the quality of urban planning strategies and to increase the degree of sustainable development. Solar panels, wind turbines and biomass-based fuels will produce all the energy Dongtan will need. Most buildings will have photovoltaic cell arrays on their roofs. A minimum of 20% of Dongtan's energy requirements will be covered by wind power. A lot of the energy will be produced by a large wind turbine farm outside the city and micro wind turbines adapted to buildings and roads will produce electricity for the individual blocks of flats. The buildings will be dense, but not more than eight stories high. Green roofs made of turf and vegetation--a natural form of insulation that also reduces run-off and recycles wastewater- -will be installed. Photovoltaic panels and small-scale windmills will be integrated into the building designs to provide up to 20 percent of the power6.
Besides, all the buildings in Dongtan will be zero-energy or passive structures. Establishing gardens or other green vegetation on the rooftops will provide insulation and filter rainwater, thus helping to reduce energy consumption. Natural ventilation will be provided by adapting to the local microclimate and positioning individual buildings accordingly. Windows, especially those facing north, will have thermal glass to minimize the need for heating and therefore the consumption of energy.
The intention is to reduce the ecological footprint of Dongtan to 2.2 ha per person by means of a combination of behavior change and energy efficiency. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF, 1.9 ha is the limit for sustainability. By way of comparison, Shanghai has an eco-footprint three times the size7.
The firm ARUP that engineered and planned the city of Dongtan wanted to aim low-consumption ideals. Indeed, Dongtan aimed a zero-carbon footprint in order to "create a development with low energy consumption that is as close to carbon neutral as possible."
But how can they achieve this goal?
Firstly, the reduction in energy consumption should have been achieved by understanding the microclimates created by urban development and using the buildings' orientation. Double glazed windows should have been installed in buildings, particularly in the north facing buildings. Dongtan aimed to reduce annual energy consumption by 66% when compared with standard new buildings in Shanghai.
Secondly, the main energy system at Dongtan should have been powered by solar panels, wind turbines and the burning of biomass, which collectively should have been produced 100% of electricity for the city. The range of wind turbines that should have been be used to produce electricity was expected to contribute to at least 20% of Dongtan's energy needs ; while the wind farm should have been located on the outskirts of the city, powered by the sea breeze, in order to produce enough energy for Dongtan. Further energy should have been produced from smaller wind turbines placed along the roadside and fitted to each building.
An 'Energy Centre' should have been managed the distribution and incoming energy from the energy production sources allowing a high level of energy efficiency.
Thirdly, Dongtan aimed to produce a large portion of its electricity through biomass energy production, a system that converts organic waste into fuel. Organic waste should have been underwent thermochemical gasification - which means they should have been collected and incinerated in large burners and turned into gas. The resulting product should have then fuelled the engines of Dongtan's heat and power generator, where clean electrical energy and heat should have been produced. This system should have been provided heating, hot water and power for Dongtan and helped to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The biomass, solar and wind energy should have helped to provide energy efficiency at Dongtan and provided residents and businesses a further reduction in operation and maintenance costs.
To conclude, through these measures, Dongtan was designed to use 64 percent less energy than a comparable city of its size built and run in a business-as-usual way.8,9,10
In five years, practically nothing constructive has happened. The site has been cleared, the farmers and peasants moved off the land, and large. Besides, all references to it have been removed from both the Shanghai Expo's website as well as Arup's. Some will say it is a real failure because the original timetable for the first phase of construction was expected to be completed by the Shanghai Expo in 2010. Within 30 years, the planned community, Dongtan could have grown to accommodate half a million people. However as you can read nothing has been already done yet. There are different reasons11.
First of all, the city was intended to be a model of green urban design. But the planning was done with little awareness of how local people lived. Moreover, the project failed because it was not clear who was supposed to pay for the city. The two possibilities were Arup, the British engineering firm signed to design the city, or Shanghai Industrial Investment, a government-controlled developer, according to New York Times reports at the time12.
The project has its limits, and many people are against it. Criticisms focus on five points:
To conclude, the firm ARUP that engineered and planned the city of Dongtan wanted to aim an ideal of eco-city. This ideal was based on green achievements: to be the world's first carbon-neutral city built internationally. Ecologically friendly, no greenhouse gas emissions, and completely self-sufficient in water and energy, Dongtan was an ambitious project, too ambitious.
Indeed, despite very good schemes in 2005 and the will to be built in 2010 for the Shanghai Expo's, today nothing really happened. The project was given up and now if the city can be built by the end of 2050, it would be great. But, we think that it will depend from the will of the authorities who have to support the project if they want that, one day, someone lives in this city.
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