GREEN STRUCTURE SWECO

The existing green structure in the area is very poor. The soil conditions, with low permeability and high salinity, make it difficult to establish green areas, as plants cannot sufficiently absorb water and nutrients from the salty soil. The green structure has to be constructed anew. The proposed green structure consists of an urban forest, ecological corridors around the rivers, canals and a finely grained network of green areas of various sizes—continuous green passages, boulevards with alleys of trees, pocket parks, green yards and clusters of trees. The vegetation is chosen to fit with the dry climate and it follows the salinity of the soil that gradually becomes less salty towards the northern parts of the eco city. Both the SWECO and the THUPDI actors emphasize the importance of choosing the appropriate salt-tolerant plants. A SWECO landscape architect elaborates: ‘We have to accept the limits of possibilities given the salinity of the soil. We read areas in the city through the vegetation, water canals and a more strict urban environment in the south, gradually more green and parks towards the north.’ (landscape architect, SWECO, pers. comm.). In the southern part of the eco city a water system of canals and salty wetlands dominates. There are islands of green but the plan has to adapt and accept the conditions given the salty soil, says the landscape architect. In the middle part of the eco city it might be possible to establish larger green areas based on wetlands, successively transforming saline ground water to fresh water. In the northern part of the eco city, agriculture and green areas dominate and rice fields and other types of farming are integrated as urban features, all freshwater based. Since rice is not so sensitive to the salty soil, the plan encourages the development of rice farming near the urban area. In one of their reports SWECO also writes about the rice fields in terms of their beautiful landscape and recreational value (SWECO Report 1, 2008).

In an interview the SWECO landscape architect explains that a goal was to weave together the green structure and the urban public space and distribute the green structure, so the distance to green areas and recreation should not be too great. The parks are connected through canals and green corridors and are easy to access from the neighbourhoods—residential areas are a maximum of 500 m from green areas (SWECO Report 1, 2008). By creating a small-scale, distributed green structure within the city, SWECO seeks to make the green structure more accessible for people to use. The SWECO planner explains,

‘By operating with a finely meshed green structure, our plan seeks to create more green in the dense city. We try to create openness in the

neighbourhood structure.’ (planner, SWECO, pers. comm.). The finely meshed system of canals and parks gives people easy access open water surfaces and green areas, supporting SWECO’s ideas about openness, accessibility and social sustainability. ‘In China ecology is more coupled to environment, ecological biotopes, vegetation. Economy is there, but the link to socio-cultural aspects is weak and the spatial dimension, such as small-scale structures and mixed functions, is more unconscious on the city level. That is more developed on the building level.’ (Ibid, pers.

comm.). There is a different approach to green structure in China, the planner notes: ‘The Chinese build giant programs together with large scale green. It becomes neither real nature nor park’. The planner says that THUPDI wanted to have a park that divided the plan in two parts.

‘Thirty years ago we also did this’, the planner says, ‘under the influence of modernism and the idea of towers in parks’. Large concentrated parks are common in China since they can support activities for many people at the same time. However, the long distances for people to reach them, in combination with the often weakly developed connections for pedestrians, tend to make the parks sparsely used.

The SWECO landscape architect indicates that the large park in the THUPDI competition proposal was linked to the oil interests in the area.

‘The Tsinghua proposal takes the oilfields into consideration’, says the landscape architect; there are large oil interests in the area and the oilfields will remain in the eco city (landscape architect, SWECO, pers.

comm.). The SWECO planner adds that the oil production was a bigger problem than they had imagined. ‘The oil fields were to be phased out gradually and replaced by park—phase out the oil fields, phase in the green. But the oil production issue was never clarified. It was difficult to get answers to when the oil production was to be closed down. The discussions faded out. The 12 km² area was easy to solve since no oil fields were located in that area and the decisions could be postponed to the future.’ (planner, SWECO, pers. comm.).

THUPDI

While the THUPDI competition proposal also has a fine-meshed system of green corridors and canals, a large wetland park divides the eco city in two parts. In an interview a THUPDI planner explains that it was considered to be too expensive to divide the city in two parts: ‘For the infrastructure and expansion in later phases it is better if the urban fabric sits together’ (planner1, THUPDI, pers. comm.). The planner does not mention the oil interests. Oil extraction is the latest active production in the area, and the oil fields, mainly located in the western part of the eco city, will gradually be closed down. The smaller oil pump stations will be

Figure 6-13.

Row of trees Farm land Ridge Farm land

Row of trees Farm land Field trails Farm land

Shelterbelt Canal Bike path & road Farm land

collected into larger units, and when the oil wells are depleted, the oil field units will be transformed to green areas to be integrated with the green structure of the eco city. When and how to close down the oil platforms was discussed with representatives from the oil company in one of the workshops I attended. A THUPDI planner later expressed that although the challenges related to the oil fields were brought up in the discussions, the problems were eventually ‘put under the table’ (planner 2, THUPDI, pers. comm.). Although the planners set ambitious targets, the big challenge is to practically implement the plans, he says: ‘The practical process of implementing the goals is extremely difficult’.

To summarize, landscape does play an important role in the eco city plan, but rather than using the landscape as found, the physical landscape is constructed. This landscape has been transformed and

modified over a long period of time. It is an intensively hybrid landscape, seamlessly mixing the natural and the man made. The actors describe the landscape of the eco city site as very degraded and stress that they add quality and value to the site through the eco city construction. This

‘opportunistic’ landscape construction brings biodiversity and contributes to the coastal reinforcement and the protection of farmland. The two rivers and the large canals have an organizational impact on the plan.

The open space system is also to a certain degree derived from existing landscape structures, and the storm water strategy that it integrates draws its character from the site and the vegetation adapts to the salinity of the soil. The open space system, however, is not the starting point of the plan proposal—the starting point is the connections in terms of rail and road. Transport linkages dominate the organization of the plan.

The site for the eco city has gained importance due to its proximity and relation to the new deepwater harbour and the industrial area through which global economic forces have started to enter and totally transform the landscape and its small-scale local economies. In relation to these forces, the physical landscape layers on site do not seem to have much resistive agency.

B: SOCIETAL CONDITIONS