Newly built civil buildings in five new cities in Shanghai will implement 100% green building standards

How is the planning and construction of the five new cities of Jiading New City, Songjiang New City, Qingpu New City, Fengxian New City, and Nanhui New City that have received much attention? The reporter learned from the 2021 Shanghai "People's Livelihood Interview" program that the concepts of ecology, green, and sustainable development will run through all stages and links of the new city's environmental quality and new infrastructure planning and construction management.

Yao Kai, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-rural Development, said that the construction of the five new cities will highlight the concepts of ecological benefits, livable and stable housing, low-carbon green, smart governance, and resilient cities. In terms of ecological benefits to the people, strengthen the construction of an ecological system with water as the vein and green as the body. The areas where the new towns are located are mostly rivers and lakes crisscrossed by rivers and lakes in the south of the Yangtze River. It is necessary to better create a water and green ecological background, form a large blue-green ecological pattern, and summarize the experience of the development and construction of "one river and one river" waterfront public space.

In terms of livable and stable housing, strengthen the development direction of industry-city integration, job-living balance, simultaneous rental and purchase, and complete supporting facilities, and optimize the spatial layout of residential buildings in the new city. Encourage the functional mixing of industrial, commercial, transportation hub and other land with residential land, create a green travel, low-carbon living atmosphere, promote the coordinated development of residential and employment spaces, and create a model of a new city with a balance of work and housing.

In terms of green and low-carbon, strengthen green construction and low-carbon operations. From construction, municipal administration to regional energy supply, etc., a new green and low-carbon system combining "point-line-surface" will be comprehensively constructed. In point, the newly-built civil buildings in the five new cities will implement 100% green building standards to meet the people's requirements for the comfort and health of residential buildings. Online, promote the new city natural gas distributed energy supply model, promote the large-scale utilization of renewable energy, build green new energy transportation facilities, and promote the construction of overhead lines into the ground and integrated pipeline corridors in urban areas. On the surface, each newly built urban area of the new city has built a model of a green ecological urban area with its own characteristics in an all-round way.

In terms of smart governance, taking digital transformation as an opportunity, we will comprehensively promote the construction of new infrastructure, accelerate the construction of communication infrastructure and data centers such as 5G and broadband networks, and systematically promote the intelligentization of infrastructure. Expanding smart application scenarios, building a city information model platform, relying on the "one network unified management" platform, deepening the use of big data, supporting the refined and intelligent governance of the new city, and comprehensively promoting the development of the new city's digital transformation.

In terms of resilient cities, we will build a comprehensive system of defense systems to improve the ability of new cities to deal with extreme natural climate impacts such as floods, earthquakes, and wind disasters. Focus on implementing the concept of sponge cities and non-waste cities, establish a safe bottom line for urban operation, and create a model for resilient new cities.

According to the "Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Planning and Construction of New Towns during the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan of the City", we will further promote the full implementation of the green and ecological city standards in the new urban areas. Integrate the concepts of green ecology, low carbon, sponge, and wisdom into the construction of the new city to provide guarantee for the high-quality construction of the five new cities.

Preliminary consideration is to select 2 areas with suitable scale and complex functions in 5 new cities as green and low-carbon pilot areas, and explore the establishment of green and low-carbon standards. At present, Shanghai has established or sorted out a total of 41 green ecological districts, including 10 green ecological districts that have been successfully created, with a land scale of approximately 30.5 square kilometers. Among the five new cities, Fengxian New City "Shanghai Fish" and Songjiang New City International Ecological Business District have taken the lead in creating green ecological urban areas.