When China decides to do something, the country can be incredibly agile and quick in implementation. One example is the construction of a "Forest City" that pushes the boundaries of sustainable urban planning and development, a concept the EPA should certainly take a look at.
The Chinese government has broken ground on this Forest City with the ambitious plan to have it fully completed by 2020, an urban development that will be covered in plants and solar panels. The city will sit along the Lijiang River in the mountainous region of Guangxi in southern China.
The design is the brain child of Stefano Boeri Architect, an Italian architectural agency known for environmentally focused urban designs. A key premise for this Forest City will be to fight air pollution that has engulfed many of China's metropolitan areas and remains a critical health threat to the Chinese people.
The city will include typical buildings such as schools, offices, hotels, hospitals, and homes of course. Albeit, these will all be covered in thousands of trees and plants of various species. Below are some key statistics about the city, including its ability to scrub the air of CO2 and pollutants and release oxygen.
As the city ages and trees become older they will only absorb more CO2 and become more effective. A single adult tree can absorb 48 pounds of CO2 and about 260 pounds of oxygen per year. This is because trees, opposite to humans, take in CO2 and release oxygen during photosynthesis.
This ambitious plan will be an example to the global community on how to build sustainable cities that help cut down on pollution while at the same time generate biodiversity and fresh oxygen. This concept may not work exactly as built here for every city but there are certainly ideas and best practices that can be implemented around the world.
This is especially true in highly populated polluted areas that are badly in need of more green space. A city of a new generation, capable of becoming a model of sustainable growth in a large country seeing, each year, 14 million farmers migrating to the cities.
Forest City Shijiazhuang
The prototype of a city composed by Vertical Forests. Forest City Shijiazhuang (FCS) is the prototype of a new generation of small, compact and green cities, composed by dozens of tall and middle size buildings – the so called “Vertical Forests”– all surrounded by the leaves of trees (ranging from 3-9 meters in height), shrubs and flowering plants.
Every VF grafts the equivalent of thousands of 20.000 square meters (2 ha) of a real forest. 2. An urban ecosystem. Forest City Shijiazhuang is an urban ecosystem which hosts 100,000 inhabitants and occupies a land of 225 hectares. Forest City Shijiazhuang is composed by 5 districts and one central Park (carpel). Every district (petal) is hosting ca. 20,000 inhabitants.
Every petal is a mix-use social environment, with residential housings, offices, retails, malls, public spaces and gardens. The central Park (carpel) is the place for the main Public Facilities of FCS: The Hospital, the School, and the Cultural Activities.
An Anti-Sprawl Device
Every Forest City will concentrate in a vertical dimension – and within a perimeter of 1.5 for 1.5 square kilometers (225 hectares) – the urban volumes that normally are hosted in a 25 hectares of land. For this reason, Forest City Shijiazhuang is the prototype of a new model of urbanization in China, which doesn’t consume agricultural and natural lands, limits the costs of public transportations and reduces the energy consumption.
A sustainable city, with low energy consumption. The vegetative filter on the buildings balconies creates a reduction – in the difference between the outside and inside temperature – of about 3 degrees. In summertime it reduces the heating of the facades by up to 30 degrees.
An Absorber of CO2 and the Dust of Urban Pollution
FCS cleans the air the vegetation within FCS is designed in such a way as to form a continuous green filter between inside and outside of inhabited areas, able to absorb the fine particles produced by urban traffic, to produce oxygen, to absorb CO2, and to shield the balconies and interiors from very high pollution of Chinese cities. Approximatively, every SQM of a Vertical Forest facade is absorbing 0.4 kg of CO2 a year.
Only considering the plants housed in the vertical facades of the green buildings (and not the ones present inside the parks and gardens), FCS will absorb approximatively 1,750 kg of CO2 a year. FCS will contribute to improve the environmental quality of the air in the whole city.
A Multiplier the Biodiversity of the Living Species
FCS will be the home of hundreds of different spices of plant life, including trees, shrubs and perennials. FCS will host many spices of birds and domestic animals.
An Ever-Changing Urban Landmark
Thanks to the variety of plant spices housed along the balconies – and in the presence of deciduous trees –, FCS will change its skin and the color composition of its leaving facades, according to changing seasons and weather conditions.
The Basic Element of a New Model of Urbanization in China
FCS is a model of urbanization and the basic element for a large number of settlement combinations. Different FC could be assembled in a cluster or along a line, creating a major conurbation, but always in respect for the maintenance of the standard fixed in FCS: for 225 hectares of a city in a 25,000 hectares of a green (agricultural, natural, sport) permeable land
Written by - Nidhi Verma
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