With the opening of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo perhaps some have noticed that amongst the many reports of the expo’s environmentally friendly facitlities and regulations and many environmental exhibits, one highlight has recently disappeared from the expo’s website and official publicity. The Dongtan Eco-city, originally widely publicized to international media as the “world’s first large-scale eco-city” and which was scheduled to complete construction before the expo, has disappointed many and caused some skepticism about the possibility of truly building “eco-cities” in China. Christina Larson, on Environment360 reports that a possible reason for the failure of eco-cities such as Dongtan in China is a misconnect between the (often internationally-designed) master plans and the actual fruition of the cities by developers and government. Worldchanging.com reported that Wired and BBC both allude to misunderstandings between the expectations of the Dongtan clients and the planning team.

However, despite the disappointments voiced in the international media about the failure of the realization of some Chinese “eco-cities”, there is also a new Chinese buzzword slowly gaining more popularity in both popular media and in architectural and urban planning circles: “Mountain-Water Cities” (山水城市) . According to Baidu Encyclopedia, the term “Mountain-Water City” was first coined in 1990 by Dr Xuesen Qian, a former professor at both Caltech and MIT, and highly recognized scholar and party member in China. Interestingly, he is most famous for his contributions to the missile and space programs in both the United States and China.

At a conference given last month in Beijing on Mountain-Water Cities (April 18, 2010), Qian described Mountain-Water Cities in the following way:

“There are mountains and water. We depend on rock and are accompanied by water. Both of these balancing elements should be clearly visible. The city should have an appropriate amount of forested area and green spaces, the right amount of rivers, streams and lakes, and enough natural ecology. The goal is to allow a city to possess a positive natural environment, life environment, and residential environment.”

From this description, the traditional balances of the Chinese conception of nature—water and mountain/rock—are present alongside and interwoven with human life. Qian stated that traditional forested parks are just one part of the concept of “Water and Mountain” (see my post on Water in Traditional Chinese culture”. “Water and Mountain” really stands for a much higher ideal: that man should find unity with nature, a principle first understood by classical Chinese poets and painters and deeply rooted in Chinese culture. “We should think of it like moving the beautiful landscape of those paintings right into our city” he said.

In addition to the presence of nature in a city, Qian emphasizes the importance of people’s livelihoods and of traditional Chinese architecture and lifestyle supported by scientific advancement. In a mountain-water city, social services and amenities should be accessible, and the unique characteristics of Chinese cities—courtyards, city gates, etc—should be integrated into a sustainable urban environment.

Though Dr. Qian is accredited to having first used the term “mountain-water city”, in recent years, the terms has been attributed to Dr. Hu Jie, the principal designer of the Olympic Forest Park in Beijing. After designing Olympic Forest Park, Dr Hu has gone on to realize some very important projects in China, is has been very excited to share his vision of the “mountain-water city” with the Chinese media.

After finishing the plans for the Olympic Forest Park, Hu designed two major projects (amongst others) that exhibit his commitment to the ancient philosophies regarding the balance of rock and water, and the unity of man and nature. The two major projects are the Tieling New City in Liaoning Province and Nanhu, Tangshan, Hebei Province. The design for Tieling New City mainly featured a man-made canal system with water diverted from Fan River into a wetland lotus park to serve as a recharge system for water resources. There were also green buffer zones to protects natural rivers from highways that cross at a man made lake called “Lake of Wishes”. Th soil displaced from the man made canals and lakes were used to build artificial mountains to shield the lotus wetland. His design of Lotus Lake International Wetland Park in Tieling won multiple awards from all over the world. Dr. Hu’s work can be seen all over China in successful projects from the master plan of Qinghai Province’s Kanbula Scenic Area to Fuzhou University’s new campus proposal.

Actually, the concept of a “mountain-water city” and an “eco-city” do not seem to differ much aside from perhaps the incorporation of traditional Chinese style and philosophy. But in many senses—their aim is the same—to integrate man’s environment with a more natural environment, to utilize natural resources in an efficient way, and to create better ways of living and healthier lifestyles. So why is it that recently it seems that there is a lot of media on foreign-led eco-city plans that fail in the end? The possibilities are endless—a question of selective reporting? A problem with the communication of expectations between designers and developers? A governmental red-tape problem? In the end though, we know that through the work of Qian Xuesen and Hu Jie, that Chinese concepts and versions of eco-cities have been carried out through construction and do exist.

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