I just saw this article (off Digg) about China’s plans for their new green cities.  It sounds like the ideas of the Chinese Government got ahead of themselves a little in their planning. The article also makes mention of the fact that the plans are put in place without the input of the people who ultimately would be affected.

After just getting back from my trip to China I can saw that though these plans may have been scrapped, or are least put on hold there is still a tremendous amount of development occurring right now all over China.  China’s building spree for the 2008 Beijing Olympics commissioned several well-known international architectural firms to design new buildings.

There is one passage from the article that I find particularly amusing.

In the case of Dongtan, as Paul French explains in a podcast posted on the Ethical Corporation web site, one problem was a feud over who would actually fund the project. “Both sides — Arup, on one side, who call themselves the ‘master builders’ of the project — and Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (the Chinese government arm that owns the land) —thought the other was going to pay for it. So Arup thought they were brought in on a project that they would then be able to design, the Chinese would build it, and pay them a large amount of money. The Chinese thought that Arup was going to build the project and that they would get themselves a free eco-city.”

Check out the story here.

Tags: china, environment, green

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