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Client

REINSTATING SMALL-SCALE Energy Foundation

CSTC (China Sustainable
NEIGHBOURHOODS IN THE Transportation Center)
MEGACITY Chongqing Planning and
Design Institute

Team
Axel Bohlemark
Camilla van Deurs
Eveline Petcu
Kristian Villadsen
Malin Nilsson
Ola Gustafsson

Location

Over the next 30 years, 300 million people will

move to the cities of China. The streets, which
have always been the core of Chinese cities and Date
the hub of life, have been replaced from one day to 2008–
the next with motorways. This implementation of
1960s modernist urban planning has had the same
catastrophic effects as in the West. New high-rise
neighbourhoods have been designed entirely for
vehicles – in a country where 90% of the
population don’t own a car. The result is
megacities full of large scale, monofunctional
zones devoid of human life.

Long-Term Collaborations
Since 2008 Gehl Architects has collaborated with the Energy Foundation on their China
Sustainable Cities and Transport Programme, focusing on the links between urban
development, public space, public transport and sustainability at an environmental,
economic and social level. In 2010 this long-term collaboration continued in Chongqing
– one of China’s biggest and fastest growing cities.

We share the Energy Foundation’s goal of facilitating change and shifting policies at a
local and national level in China. Rather than delivering masterplans, we collaborate on
developing initiatives for change with local planners – in Chongqing the city’s Planning
and Design Institute – to make sure the design, principles and strategies are understood
and anchored in the local community. We share our survey methods and results with
local groups and stakeholders, and run masterclasses and workshops with our design
and planning colleagues in cities worldwide.

Learning from the Past

The monolithic planning of China’s new megacities has all too often razed existing
human-scale neighbourhoods that were once full of life. In Chongqing the job we shared
was not only to create positive change, but also to prevent the demolition and

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downgrading of the many positive and humanly sustainable aspects of traditional

Chinese city culture. Sustainable design is about understanding who you design for, and
where they prefer to be. Our trademark Public Space/Public Life survey revealed that
150% more people were spending time in old, small streets than in the new, commercial
public spaces, and 640% more people were spending time in traditional Chinese
neighbourhoods with active, open facades than in streets with closed building fronts.

From Pilot Projects to Policy Change

In Chongqing the main goals were to improve the quality of urban public space, revitalize
street life and extend and improve the macro network of public transport with a micro
network of interconnected streets and public spaces. On the basis of our survey findings,
we made recommendations & designed pilot projects to show people that things can be
done differently.

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These pilot projects are being implemented fast by the local planning and design team,
who are taking existing spaces and putting them to better use so people can experience
change first hand. One of these is Pedestrian Route 3, which we redesigned to
encourage walking and social interaction in the inner city. In 2012

Our trademark Public Space/Public Life survey

revealed that 150% more people were spending time in
old, small streets than in the new, commercial public
spaces, and 640% more people were spending time in
traditional Chinese neighbourhoods with active, open
facades than in streets with closed building fronts.

the route was awarded the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s sustainability
prize on the basis of its contribution to the ‘human, living environment’. This represented
solid political backing for the importance of the human scale of the street, and a radical
shift in the urban planning mindset in China.

Towards A People-Centred Future

It also represented a clear green light for the plan we developed with the city for the

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entire downtown area, shifting the focus from traffic flow to a connected pedestrian
network of spaces for people to be. This public space network strategy with
human-scale alleys and a harbour front of interconnected recreational areas is now
ready to be implemented, and with the work we’re doing we hope to influence policy
makers all over China. For the first time in the nation’s urban planning history, the latest
Five-Year Plan of the People’s Republic of China includes people-oriented development –
a top-level acknowledgement of the positive impact and need for holistic development
on a human scale for the people, the economy and the environment in Chinese cities.

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