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New ideas needed to build cities

By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-19 09:17

Rebuilding an old nation involves far more difficulties than people may ordinarily think. At times, it takes the people's resolution to fight common threats despite personal grievances, as seen from the massive rescue efforts following the Sichuan earthquake last week, in which all citizens have either physically or financially participated.

But in public finance and development planning, televised scenes of devastated mountainous towns in western Sichuan are symbolic of a challenge that will be many times the cost of the current rescue mission.

China should help Sichuan, much of whose economy is dangerously perched on quake-prone mountains, build a re-development zone in a geologically safer area.

Indeed, with the ground-level protective efforts gradually falling in place, the central cabinet should waste no time in putting this economic revitalization program on the drawing board.

With the beginning of the 2009 financial year, it would be inspiring to hear, from the 2009 annual meeting of the National People's Congress, for instance, Beijing's announcement of a full-fledged re-development program for Sichuan.

It would be good to boost the morale among people in the disaster's worst-hit area and to channel the society's disposable money to useful purposes.

Sichuan deserves a re-development zone because it no longer seems to make sense for the several riverside counties near the epicenter to rebuild themselves where they used to be. It is about time to take a second look at the tradition of building towns along the river valleys.

River valleys in mountainous areas, especially the steep sort as in Sichuan, usually betray the fault lines in the earth's crust. But in old times, people tended to gather on riverside to access drinking water, irrigation, and occasional water-borne trade. This was how, before the modern times, the economy in Sichuan, as in many other parts of China's southwest, used to be sustained.

In the era of collective farms and cottage industries, the old way of the economy could still get stretched to a certain extent, by way of building more river dams to generate convenient power supply for industrial operations.

But that is where the limit is. Connecting those riverside towns with good roads has never been easy. As reported immediately following the earthquake, all roads to those riverside towns were cut off by landslides. A major earthquake can lead to hundreds of landslides, while the more frequent small earthquakes, even heavy rains, also cause landslides from Sichuan's fragile mountains, to interrupt the regular road service.

At the same time, the demand from the swelling population and industries is also putting increasing pressure on the local water resources. Too many dams, for instance, subject the downstream towns to the added danger of a flood caused by a dam burst in times of an earthquake. Costs for abiding by the building standards for a town lying on a fault line can be huge - for all residential buildings, public facilities and all transport connections.

Now that the earthquake has destroyed the economy built on the old development model, let there be a fresh start - toward a better balance between man and nature, and between economy and the environment.

That would be an extensive urban community in a safer area, with safer buildings and a maximum ability to recycle its sources. So that this kind of new cities can accommodate many immigrants from the inaccessible old towns. It is only in an overall plan like this, efforts to raise building standards can be meaningful. At the same time, the manufacturing of quake-resistant building materials can be expected to grow into a new industry.

Economic researchers have long criticized that most of China's urban development plans are too near-sighted, aimed primarily at slowing down the population growth rather than accommodating more people and more business activities.

That is why, despite China becoming a stronger power in terms its construction capability, it has not been running many centrally coordinated city-building programs. It is about time there were new plans for new cities.