1+1= Disingenuity
*1* Eco-designs on future cities
By Jo Twist
BBC News science and technology reporter
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4682011.stm
Imagining what our cities will look like in the future has long been a favourite pastime of the Hollywood movie industry.
On the whole we are presented with striking images of glass and metallic towering structures, flying cars and technologically smart everything. Dystopic pockets of inequality and dirt inhabit the not so shiny bits.
Ask a gathering of leading thinkers in the worlds of architecture and design, and you get a rather different picture.
Some 70 million people a year migrate from the country to cities. That is about 130 a minute, says Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities.
Many of these set up home in squats, put together from scarce materials, if put together at all. There are a billion squatters in 2005. By 2050, that figure will reach three billion.
At this rate, our future cities may turn out to be quasi-temporary, low-tech shacks, missing the basics of human life, such as water and electricity, still belching out the waste of fuels that warm the globe.
"The issue is about neighbourhoods," Mr Neuwirth told delegates at TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Oxford, UK.
"Cities have to engage these residents because they are building the cities of the future."
View from above
Globalisation has done its best to push constant migration deeper into the urban from the rural with the promise of work.
We lay the city out so everyone can move in parks without crossing traffic, the buildings have daylight lighting, the university is at the centre, and with hi-tech connectivity
William McDonough, architect
But cities have failed to cope with it, physically, emotionally or mentally. They cannot sustain the flow and they are not sustainable and fair places to live. Visualising globalisation which continues to run rampant across parts of the globe has come a step closer with Google Earth.
It brings places far from your desk right onto the computer screen with a couple of clicks.
"What is amazing is that you really can, from your desk, explore the globe," explains Stefano Boeri, lecturer, author, editor of Domus magazine, and architect.
"You can fly around then you can get closer to parts you want to see. This website is a combination of the virtual node of thousands of satellite images."
Satellite images, he says, are one attempt to visualise, represent and decipher globalisation and its marks on cities.
"But what we really understand and see when you use satellite images, first of all, is our ambition."
But it is a view from above that is apparently objective, he says. It is still a view from a certain distance from the physical environment you attempt to decipher.
New city China
Internationally renowned designer, sustainability architect and author of Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough, argues that we can only think of our future cities if we think about what our intention is as a species.
The question for designers of what is dubbed the Next City is how to love all species all the time.
Mr McDonough's ideas for the Next City are about to be played out in China where his company has been charged with building seven entirely new cities.
His book has been adopted as government policy in China, which needs to house 400 million more people in the next 12 years.
The cities he has planned are a far cry from Milton Keynes.
Everything in his cities is designed from the molecule up. They meet the usual requirements for cost, performance, and function. But they also mean business when it comes to ecological intelligence and social justice.
"The goal is a safe, healthy, just world, clean air, soil and power, that is elegantly enjoyed.
"In the 70s we saw the hegemony of fossil fuels. So what would be the next design philosophy we would want to work with?"
He looks at the Next Cities as objects of human artifice. They can grow, they can breathe, and they can be ecologically sound, just as trees, forests, and gardens are.
They can use energy, expel waste, and reproduce in ways that nature intended without destroying everything else around them.
"In biology, growth is good. If we could do something where growth is good, that would be a way of thinking of a good operating system for design," he says.
Waste as energy
The images he shows of what he plans look like gardens of Eden.
"We lay the city out so everyone can move in parks without crossing traffic, the buildings have daylight lighting, the university is at the centre, and with hi-tech connectivity."
The buildings and all around it work like biological, growing beings, photosynthesising and producing and re-using their own energy.
Waste is energy in Mr McDonough's Next City vision; methane is used to cook food. A quarter of the city's cooking will be done with gas from sewerage.
"The energy systems will be solar energy. China will be largest solar manufacturer in the world," says McDonough.
To top the Next City in McDonough's thinking, the soil will be moved onto the roofs. The city will be inhabited by species and the top of the city will be green.
His approach to city design may be the stuff of some people's eco-science fiction novel. But it shows that cities can change - humans can change the way they do things.
It may not mean the city is transformed magically into a just city that is a cure-all for global warming.
But, he says, the Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.
Published: 2005/07/14 10:00:13 GMT
*2*
China's highway to economic growth
By Nick Mackie
in Chongqing, China
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/4633241.stm
At last, a mountain road in China that is spectacular for its scenery - and also safe. The mid-section of the Chongqing to Guizhou motorway should be finished later this year.
This 100 km highway bores through 17 imposing hillsides and crosses 121 deep valleys.
Great "T" section bridge piers reach for the sky, but manage to avoid blotting the landscape.
New opportunities
The project is an impressive example of Chinese civil engineering.
Jiangsu Expressway
Zhejiang Expresssway
Shenzhen Expressway
Sichuan Expressway
Anhui Expressway
The new highway bypasses a winding, potholed rural road that weaves between some of the region's poorest villages. The old route is prone to dangerous rockslides.
Here every day an estimated 3,000 lorries churn up the tarmac round the hairpin bends. Many are old and overloaded, spewing-out clouds of rancid, black smoke that choke the farmers in the roadside paddy fields.
According to the Asian Development Bank, which finances around a quarter of the $800m project, the new route will power the economy by linking the local rural population to market opportunities, social services and employment, not to mention attracting investment deeper into the country.
Every year China is constructing around 4,000 km of expressways, towards its target of connecting every city with a population of 200,000 or more to an 85,000 km national motorway network.
Half the work is already done.
Lenders demand foreign consultants
Ambitious plans like this are opening China's door to foreign consultants.
Lenders like the Asian Development Bank, World Bank and Japan's Bank for International Co-operation insist on having independent experts to advise on some of the world's most challenging construction projects.
"The international funding institutions require foreign consultants to come in and act as a liaison between them and the clients, " explains Bill Austin, Managing Director (Asia-Pacific) of the UK consulting engineers Halcrow Ltd.
"(We) help the clients develop their project management capabilities and to help them raise their design standards. And this is certainly the best entry point for foreign consultants coming into the market."
Halcrow's consultancy fee on this project is $1.5m.
Panda luck
The company has five highway supervision contracts underway in the Chongqing-Guizhou region.
With an eye on other western China projects, Halcrow held its recent board meeting at the Chengdu Panda Research Centre, where the firm won a building design contract.
"The giant panda is the national emblem of China, it's very close to the Chinese people's heart, it's close to the government's heart," explains Bill Austin.
"Although this is a small project, it's highly prestigious and we've been able to pick up other work on the back of that."
The directors decided to sponsor a female bear, "He Le", which they hope will bring them luck on the business front as western China continues to invest heavily in developing its highways and other infrastructure.
Strategic routes
>From the late 1980's, China's government recognized that its neglected, underdeveloped road network constrained the economy.
So it embarked on a massive 85,000 km highway building programme. It is designed to bring the country on par with the United States within 30 years.
>From Beijing, seven routes are fanning out to Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong, Kunming, Urumchi and Harbin.
The plan sets out nine additional highways from north to south and 18 from east to west.
Over 34,000 km of expressways are now in use, with the most developed road network in the more commercially mature eastern seaboard.
A further 30,000 km will be built further inland with its challenging topography.
Niches for Western firms
While opportunities exist for consulting engineers, foreign contractors, however, can't compete on price with local firms.
Typically, a four lane motorway will cost $4 million per km - double this if there are tunnels or bridges.
Around 100 Chinese construction companies are capable of handling these projects.
However, there's clearly potential for those supplying construction equipment and traffic control technology.
Around 60% of equipment like asphalt pavers and vibratory rollers are imported. While Chinese companies share the market for end user technology such as electronic bulletin systems and toll booth readers.
Virgin land
Local authorities are also keen to attract foreign capital to finance and operate their new highway networks.
This would free-up government cash for the likes of badly needed environmental projects.
Chongqing, for example, wants to strike its first deal with an outside investor - one that's interested in partnering a further 1,300 kilometres of motorways planned for the next five years.
"The west of China could be regarded as virgin land, " enthuses Li Zuwei, General Manager of Chongqing Expressway Development Company.
'Everything is negotiable'
"There is great potential for growth. If investors eye a medium to long term return, they should invest in infrastructure. At least in, say, 10 years, you could get a return," says Mr Li.
In 2004, he says a deal was close with a French investor, but the city baulked at a condition guaranteeing a 20% return.
Now, Mr Li says, "everything is negotiable" - including development rights along the highway, even a reasonable guaranteed return. And, of course, there are preferential tax policies.
He cites several operators elsewhere, mainly in China's wealthier east, whose shares trade well on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Anhui Expressway, in particular, has enjoyed a 41% share price rise over the past 6 months, after reporting that four of its five roads saw revenues rise.
On 1 June, the Chinese government cut the business tax rate on highway toll income from 5% to 3%. This was to compensate for a reduction in tariffs for heavy duty trucks introduced earlier in the year.
Investors should note that the government levies the tolls in China.
No traffic in the West
But there are many economies in China.
Development is uneven.
Although the western region is modernising - and receiving billions of dollars annually in central government support - near China's coast more people can afford cars.
Shanghai's average income is five times greater than Chongqing's.
So the toll booths out here aren't as busy.
Uneven returns
With the exception of the original Chongqing to Chengdu highway built 10 years ago - the main inter-city truck and bus route - highway driving here is usually a pleasure as there is so little traffic.
The 118km Chongqing to Fuling link opened with a fanfare four years ago.
By the end of this year, total revenues are not expected to reach 10% of the $600m building cost.
Half of China's huge infrastructure project is now complete.
The lion's share of the balance will be built in the developing central and western regions - where the authorities are eager to attract foreign expertise and foreign capital.
China's developing regions offer opportunities for those with building and engineering talents - notably fee earning experts.
But investments here should be planned for the long term, if the projects are dependent on local spending power.
Published: 2005/07/19 00:46:52 GMT