Cities Within Cities

One solution – a real one in a country where cities are expanding and population moving at such unimaginable speeds – is to simply start again. Build a city, a village, a town from scratch. Make it perfect. It’s a reasonable response, given that even in the midst of established cities, the process of razing and rebuilding continues apace in China. With demolition the norm, everything can start over and become new. In this context, self-contained developments and mini-cities are flourishing. These new developments are becoming a model for future development and redevelopment, promising to reshape China’s cities – and the world’s.

As a template and an experiment in influence, China’s burgeoning “cities within cities” are striving to solve the problems of Chinese urbanism in general: to resolve the tension between economic, environmental and social demands, without erasing the unique heritage of Chinese urban design. Such sweeping ambitions have attracted big names in architecture, engineering and urban design. Now, as important projects begin moving out of planning stages and into construction, we’re about to see just how effective these model cities can be.

One of the most spectacular pioneers of this genre of city-building is Steven Holl Architects’ Linked Hybrid, a “city within a city” located beside the old city wall of Beijing. The design is a reaction against both the standardisation of mass housing in contemporary Chinese cities, and the disregard for integration and collectivity seen in many of the country’s iconic avant-garde buildings. Instead, the development’s 728 apartments will be available in hundreds of layouts, and the eight towers will be linked at the twentieth floor by a loop housing cafés and services. The idea is to create a shared urban experience made interesting and flexible by the inclusion of individual outlooks.

Aiming to create a “filmic urban space”, Holl has designed a stylised, idealised model of urban space, without the distance of the film screen or the abstraction of the unattainable ideal. Instead, Linked Hybrid emphasises shifting perspectives that locate the inhabitants within the urban fabric. Bathed in the cinematic glow of Holl’s thrilling attention to light and colour – from coloured membranes illuminating misting fountains to glimpses of films reflected in the water and the surprising fleck of colour on a window ledge – Linked Hybrid draws on the language of cinema to transform urban space into a dreamscape.

Envisaging urban space anew, Linked Hybrid is a model of an ideal twenty-first century city. It defers to Chinese heritage with a careful attention to the principles of feng shui, producing a model city by local standards. Its aim of a prestigious LEED Gold rating will testify to its sound green credentials. And, with cafés, delis, laundries, dry cleaners, florists and a range of other services, it strives to cater to its inhabitants’ every need, creating a localised village-style urban setting.

As Linked Hybrid approaches completion this year, construction is getting underway in earnest on perhaps the most important – and certainly the most ambitious – of these city designs. Dongtan Eco-City is breathtaking in its scope. Expected to house almost half a million inhabitants by 2050 and up to 10 000 by the time its first phase is completed in 2010, Dongtan will be the world’s first environmentally sustainable city: a carbon-neutral, zero waste example of what integrated sustainable design can be.

This stunningly aspirational project is located on Chongming Island, in the mouth of the Yangtze River. It’s a short commute from Shanghai’s bustling, crowded streets, with plans to link it to the mainland by bridge and tunnel. The city will eventually cover 40% of the island, the rest returned to its natural state as a series of wetlands, protected from the city by a 3.5 kilometre buffer zone.

Like the Linked Hybrid, Dongtan takes the village as its model. Interspersing housing, shops and services, it aims to limit travel and enable inhabitants to live comfortably within their local areas. Ultimately, it will aim to provide enough jobs to employ most inhabitants on the island. A far cry from centralised cities and their dormitory suburbs, this move to villages within cities, to localised living and limited transit, may be the most distinctive characteristic of these new developments. Its advantages are both environmental and social, cutting back on transport use while fostering a sense of community, locality and place.

If Dongtan and Linked Hybrid are model cities, they’re models drawn to scale: fully functional, full-sized modular components of a new urbanism; the beginnings of a city formed from interconnected but highly localised villages. And they’re spreading: Arup has signed a contract to produce three new eco-cities in China, and similar developments are popping up in the UK, drawing on the experiences and lessons of this early experiment. Investigating mass housing that’s socially responsible, environmentally sustainable and eminently livable, these developments are a genuinely exciting alternative to reliving a dystopic Industrial Revolution on China’s enormous scale. +

IMAGES Courtesy and Copyright of Arup, Steven Holl Architects, Iwan Baan

1 Construction on the Linked Hybrid is nearing completion and expected to open later this year. 2 The elevated loop leaves space for greenery at ground level, while still creating a sense of connectedness between the towers. 3 Inside the ring of towers, a hotel and Cineplex provide focal points for the development. At night, fragments of films will be displayed on the underside of the Cineplex, and reflected in the pond. 4 The East Village, the first phase of Dongtan, is expected to be completed by 2010. It contains part of the marina, as well as nearly a square kilometre of open space and parkland. 5 Harbour flyover view of Dongtan by night. The spectacular vistas reflect its dual purpose as a real city and as an educational model for future development. 6 Eye-level view of a pond. The extensive expanses of water will allow water taxis to form part of Dongtan’s public transport system, making use of its position on 11 Chongming Island.