In the third article of our five-part series on planned cities in China, Dieter Hassenpflug first briefly introduces the three projects that will subsequently be the subject of his reflections here on the Baumeister blog. Under the general question “German planned cities in China – an intercultural misunderstanding?”, he then turns to an analysis of the Sino-German Eco Park in Qingdao. It is […]

In the third article of our five-part series on planned cities in China, Dieter Hassenpflug first briefly introduces the three projects that will subsequently be the subject of his reflections here on the Baumeister blog. Under the general question “German planned cities in China – an intercultural misunderstanding?” , he then turns to an analysis of the Sino-German Ecopark in Qingdao. It is the first of the three new town projects designed by German architects and urban planners.

Let’s start with a brief review: Under the heading “Chinese New Towns I: Panjin Port New Town”, the first article in our five-part series offered a western view of the planned city on northern Liaodong Bay. This project by the Tianzuo Studio at Jianzhu University in Shenyang and its director Lingling Zhang demonstrates how contemporary Chinese urban planning appropriates all the technical techniques, materials, design options, etc. currently available worldwide, but then molds them into the forms of the rich Chinese urban planning tradition.

As already emphasized in the interview in Baumeister Magazine No. 5, 2019, the high degree of “reflexivity” in Chinese urban planning is striking, i.e. the extremely close interlocking of tradition and modernity in the medium of urban planning. The Chinese may design and build as modern as possible, but they always take their history and traditions with them into the future. This results in cities with a distinct Chinese identity: cities that are nothing other than a contemporary spatialization of a great cultural memory.

The second publication in the series of articles confirmed this reflexivity in an impressive way. It was written by Lingling Zhang, the master planner of the new town on Liaodong Bay and also the designer of over 80 public buildings in this port city. The main theme of his manifesto was to answer the question of how the design of a Chinese planned city as a whole and in its parts can be integrated into the – natural and cultural – local, regional and national context.

So much for the brief review. Under the title “German planned cities in China – an intercultural misunderstanding?”, our author Dieter Hassenpflug now turns to three other projects whose master plans are based on designs by German architects and urban planners: the Chinese-German Eco Park in Qingdao by GMP, Anting New Town by AS+P in western Shanghai and Lingang by GMP in south-eastern Shanghai. Although these planned cities were designed by German architects, planned with German participation and in some cases also built, they differ greatly from one another in terms of concept, design and also the planned number of inhabitants.

However, all three new town plans by German architects are in danger of proving to be at least partially a failure in the medium term. The intellectual appeal of looking at such “threatened” projects from an urban planning theory perspective, however, lies in the fact that you can learn a great deal about the differences between Chinese and German urban planning. For in these German-Chinese new towns, socio-cultural facts are spatialized in a way that highlights the sometimes extreme differences between German and Chinese society – and thus also between their cities – in a way that is as clear as it is conflictual.

A sustainable planned city for Qingdao

The first of the urban development projects with German roots evaluated in the following three articles was launched in 2010 with high standards for a sustainable city and also with the highest level of political interest. It is the new city project “Sino-German Eco Park” by GMP in Qingdao. The foundation stone was laid at the end of 2011.

Since then, while new urban districts have been springing up to the south-west of Jiaozhou Wan (Bay) around the futuristic-looking administration and organization center (also known as the “Technology Centre”), the German city that was a decisive factor in the choice of location for the “Sino-German Eco City” is crumbling away on the north-eastern side of the bay. This refers to the former German and Japanese colonial city of Tsingtau, which is in danger of disappearing over the years, either through decay or Chinese transformation. Although there are individual buildings that have been restored, renovated and used in one way or another, the colonial city as a whole, the European integrity of its spatial texture, still seems to lack any perspective.

Across the bay, on the other hand, work is underway to realize a model for sustainable urban development that is exemplary for Chinese urban planning. However, an analysis of the project reveals that the aspirations and reality of this planned city can only be reconciled with difficulty. One reason for this could be the master plan, which, with its dispersed arrangement of districts, hinders the development of a local city center – and thus also the creation of a sustainable, compact “city of short distances” of the Chinese type. But before we turn to this project, let’s take a look at two other German projects in China.

A German city in Shanghai

About the second project: some fifteen years have passed since I first visited Anting New Town. The planned city, designed for a population of around 60 thousand, was under construction at the time. Walking around the construction site, I was amazed at the gabled roofs made of concrete slabs and admired the air conditioning technology, which was ambitious by Chinese standards at the time. At that time, however, I had no idea what a profound impact the scientific exploration of this city would have on my knowledge of urban development in China.

A good ten years ago, in 2007, I had the opportunity to visit the “German city” for a second time. With the exception of the city center, the first construction phase had been completed and the spatial characteristics were clear. However, Anting’s study provided an extremely pessimistic forecast for the future of the new town. The results of the research were first published in the book “Der urbane Code Chinas”, which appeared in 2009 in the “Bauwelt Fundamente” series published by Birkhäuser Verlag. Based on urban semiotic methods of decoding the space, it was deduced in detail why it will hardly be possible to prevent Anting New Town from suffering the fate of a ghost town. The halt to construction, which took place after around half of the planned territory had been built over, seemed to support the pessimistic verdict for the time being.

Another ten years later, in October 2017, I managed to visit Anting Neustadt again. I wanted to know what happened after the moratorium imposed at the time was lifted, i.e. what happened to the “German town”. What consequences were drawn? Did the improved connection to the center of Shanghai have comprehensibly positive effects? Did the continued construction of the city and the construction of numerous neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity of the new city stimulate the settlement of vacant apartments? Did the provision of social infrastructure, kindergartens or schools have the hoped-for influence on the demand for housing? Did time, which is supposed to heal urban wounds, also have the desired effect in the case of Anting? We shall see.

The ideal city of Lingang in Shanghai

The third and final project in our series: the planned city of Lingang was designed by GMP for around 800,000 inhabitants in the style of a radially concentrated ideal city of the Renaissance. However, the center is not a market or a castle, but a circular lake with a shoreline length of an impressive 9 kilometers. This in turn is surrounded by a ring-shaped city center. This design is somewhat reminiscent of Ebenezer Howard’s famous drawing of a radial garden city with a park-like center. According to the intentions of the local planning and political players, Lingang is to become the center of a new special economic zone.

In 2006, I had my first opportunity to inspect the project located in Shanghai’s Nanhui district (now part of Pudong) in the company of the then Dean of the Centre for Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP), Prof. Dr. Zhiqiang Wu. Transferring a small-scale image to the urban planning scale of a city of millions could cause problems, Wu reasoned at the time, referring to a metaphorical image that was used extensively – and apparently successfully – for marketing the master plan. It shows a falling drop hitting a liquid surface (water) and creating concentric waves. This creates the strictly geometric, radially concentrated form that supposedly inspired Lingang’s design.

The reception of urban space is certainly fundamentally different from that of a comparatively tiny mesocosmic event. However, it will become apparent that it is not so much the zooming of a falling drop of water that poses a problem, but rather the sociocultural incompatibility of the European and Chinese (ideal) city.

The construction work had just begun at that time and even a year later, when I visited Lingang Neustadt again, the work had not yet progressed sufficiently to justify an analysis and evaluation for the above-mentioned volume. Now, however, at the end of 2017, the construction progress provided enough material for an initial assessment. Lingang, as an analysis of the master plan already suggests – and this analysis is confirmed by the on-site visit – must radically compromise the European, radial-concentric geometry of the basic structure in order to avoid the impending fate of a disintegrated city – with serious consequences for the integrity of the cityscape.

THE CHINESE-GERMAN ECO-PARK IN QINGDAO

The city of Qingdao was founded in 1897 as a model colonial settlement of the German Empire and was developed into a respectable port city in the comparatively short time up to the First World War. Even today, numerous remnants of these beginnings can still be seen in the center of the metropolis on the east coast of Shandong, which has grown to around 9.5 million inhabitants.

It is therefore hardly surprising that Qingdao continues to arouse particular interest among Germans. This applies to city tourism, diverse trade and business relations, bilateral initiatives in the fields of education and culture – but also in the areas of urban planning and development. For example, the Sino-German Eco Park in Qingdao was launched in the form of a high-level cooperation agreement between Germany and China. According to the founding documents, the project is expected to develop into a model of sustainable urban development with China-wide appeal. In line with these ambitious ideas, the heads of government of both countries involved did the honors at the inauguration in July 2010: Premier Wen Jiabao on the Chinese side and Chancellor Angela Merkel on the German side. A few months earlier, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is highly respected in China, had already participated in the opening of a ‘Forum for Renewable Energies’ in Qingdao as an ambassador, so to speak, of the aforementioned cooperation agreement.

The Sino-German Ecopark is an industrial and commercial park – albeit a special kind of industrial park. An almost complete city is being built around it in functional terms. In the future, around 80,000 people will live in the 12 square kilometers of the park and, if possible, work in the industrial park’s companies. The plan is to develop around 45 percent of the area for business and public infrastructure, around 25 percent for housing and retail and around 30 percent as green and recreational space. The aim is nothing less than an intelligent, sustainable model city, a kind of Industrial City 4.0. The areas will be operated and marketed by a Chinese state-owned company, Sino-German United Group Co, Ltd. based in Qingdao.

The industrial park is being realized south of Jiaozhou Bay and the intersection of two busy roads of supra-regional importance. The G22, which connects the city center with the southern periphery via a large bridge over Jiaozhou Bay, runs in a north-south direction and the S7601, one of the most important access roads for the large port located near the planned city, runs in an east-west direction. In addition, the Sino-German Ecopark is located in the northern part of the Chinese National Special Economic Zone of Qingdao.²

The master plan for this model industrial city of the 21st century was once again drawn up by Studio GMP, which is very successful in China. As in the case of Lingang New Town, this design also uses a visual metaphor to fire the imagination of the decision-makers involved in the plan – with obvious success. According to the authors, the kidney-shaped quarters are a collection of 8 “pebbles”, which, embedded in picturesque greenery, reflect the shapes of the mountains and the landscape of Qingdao. Looking at the city model and unaware of the narrative on which the creators of the design base it, viewers of the city model presented in an exhibition building sometimes assume that it could be lotus leaves floating on the surface of a lake. Be that as it may, this is also an appealing design. But how viable is it when it meets reality?

Politicians, planners and local service providers want the Sino-German Ecopark to be home to four forward-looking production sectors that are particularly promising for Sino-German cooperation. Firstly, genetic engineering and medical technology, secondly, passive building technology, thirdly, intelligent fourth-generation production technology and fourthly, sustainable energy generation. As the ambitions of the urban project exceed the commercial objectives, four platforms for intercultural exchange between China and Germany are also to be established. These concern, firstly, urban development, secondly, production and technology, thirdly, education, culture and sport and, fourthly, trade and economic cooperation.

Commercial activities in the field of Sino-German exchange are bundled in the German Enterprise Center, a service and office complex that opened in 2016 and began operations. Almost 20 German companies are now said to have set up liaison offices or foreign branches there. One project that stands out in terms of its visual presence is the FC Bayern Munich soccer school with its training buildings and pitches. On the German side, there is also a branch of the drugstore Rossmann.

The planners and developers of the eco-park are housed in an office building that also opened in 2016. The Passive House Technology Center, designed by German-Italian architects Ludwig Rongen, Michael Tribus and Gernot Valentin, is regarded as a flagship project for large-scale sustainable architecture and, according to the Chinese and German project developers, should not only inspire the building construction on the Ecopark site, but also set standards for sustainable construction throughout China. In line with this ambitious objective, Wen’s successor as Premier, Li Keqiang, and Angela Merkel once again signed the contract for the construction of this building certified by the Darmstadt-based DGNB e.V. in 2014.

If you look at the urban planning design of GMP’s Ecopark from the point of view of its potential for sustainable urban development, then doubts arise. We know that a sustainable city must meet five fundamental spatial requirements: it must, firstly, have a strong, articulated center; it must, secondly, be compact, i.e. have a certain density; it must, thirdly, be functionally diverse; it must also (fourthly) be well greened and, depending on its size, also have green corridors. Finally, fifthly, it must be well connected in terms of transportation, for example, it must have a balanced ratio of concentric and radial traffic areas and offer a diverse transportation infrastructure.

Let’s start with the center. It should be noted right away that there is no such thing as a center, neither a punctual nor a linear one. The functions that typically make up a center, i.e. the spatial interaction of economic, administrative and intellectual functions in conjunction with housing, are spread across eight different districts. With the exception of three largely ‘pure’ (monofunctional) commercial districts in the west of the eco-park, we find urban functions in the remaining districts in varying numbers – up to purely residential quarters – and in varying mixed proportions. This initially proves that the creators of the plan had diversity and a mixture of functions in mind.

However, by foregoing the ecological potential of urban centrality, they are unable to give the imperative of functional diversity and mix an effective spatial figure that guarantees a “city of short distances”. Instead, the power of sustainable centrality is dispersed over many square kilometers and thus depotentiated. The disadvantages of spatial zoning cannot be overcome in this way. If functional diversity and mix are to contribute to the sustainability of a city, then urban centrality is just as indispensable as compactness or density.

It could be argued that the individual city districts each have a high density; after all, vertical residential construction is carried out with the usual, very high number of storeys (3, 4 and higher) and the commercial and administrative structures are also quite compactly contextualized in relation to the individual districts. But here too, the individual districts can be as compact as possible – this does not create a compact eco-park. Once again, there is no center that could make the dispersed densification effective in terms of sustainable urban development.

In addition, the individual districts are each too small and therefore unable to accommodate all the functions required for a “city of short distances”. A district with one or more compounds and a university campus³ does not constitute a compact urban space. This is because you probably have to go to another district to go shopping or to work. However, these districts are hardly within walking distance. They are too far apart for that. On the other hand, the districts can be compared to the traditional Chinese danwei (the “production cooperatives”) from Mao Zedong’s time. This makes them attractive to the Chinese at first glance. At second glance, however, it becomes clear that the range of urban functions is incomplete, meaning that the districts cannot deliver what they promise on the surface.

Networking the neighborhoods

One of the first districts to be almost completely built on is home to the new accommodation for the inhabitants of fifteen villages that fell victim to the development of the industrial park. The result is a high-density neighborhood of unsightly high-rise apartment buildings that are no different in quality and construction technology from the countless other large housing estates that are springing up all over China. In this case, economic considerations have apparently overridden the necessary role model function for sustainable (social) housing construction. This does not look like a contribution to the credibility and integrity of the eco-park project.

The lack of centrality not only impairs the spatial organization of urban functions and density, but also spatial development. The dispersed organization of the districts and quarters forces mobility that would not be necessary in a concentric urban structure. The plan therefore relies on a linear public transport system (S-Bahn, U-Bahn) with a total of three stations in the Ökopark area. However, this linear system does not provide access to a homogeneous linear center, which does not exist, but to two to three districts in each case. The districts to the south are not yet directly connected. If you bear in mind that one central stop or two stops on a central axis would be sufficient for a punctual or moderately linear centered, compact form of the planned city, the proposed solution is a very ineffective one. Not primarily because of the three stops, by the way, but mainly because of the expected low frequency of public transport customers in the area of the planned city.

And what about traffic differentiation? The main access roads have four and two lanes. Cycle paths seem to have been forgotten. At least there are wide sidewalks, but without dropped kerbs at junctions. Overall, the profile of the streets follows the design typical of the country, which is based on the model of elevated space. It therefore also seems clear that the use of motor vehicles is in the foreground. It can be assumed that the new town will be equipped with an efficient infrastructure for electromobility. In this way, the requirements for good air quality would be met, at least locally.

Lush green space

But there is also the green space. With 30 percent of the total area, the planned city is really well served, especially as this also achieves a ratio of a good 30 square meters of green space per capita of future residents. However, the way the urban space has been formed, the lush green spaces act more like barriers. They separate the districts from each other and transform them into “villages”. Peripheralized structures that, in the absence of a center, density, proximity and local diversity, require a great deal of movement in space in order to successfully shape the everyday lives of their inhabitants. On the one hand, everything is available, but on the other, what is available is scattered in such a way that it thwarts the high expectations of a sustainable city. Once again, it is a single, indispensable element that severely undermines the goals that have been set – the renunciation of urban centrality in whatever form.

However, there is another formal aspect that diminishes the value of the green space for the eco-park. The green zones that separate the districts from each other are public parks and not the exclusive neighborhood or community green preferred by Chinese city dwellers, which is assigned to the compounds in the form of neighborhood or community courtyards and is used exclusively by their residents for the purposes of meeting and local recreation. Public parks do not have a long tradition in China and are therefore clearly ranked behind the neighborhood parks within the compounds in terms of value. Due to the large amount of space allocated to public green areas, GMP’s design leaves little room for the realization of community parks in the compounds. As the designs show, their necessity is by no means completely ignored, but their importance and therefore their spatial requirements are far less important than the public green spaces. The bottom line is that the lush public green space brings spatial-functional benefits (emission reduction, healthier air, air conditioning, etc.), but probably no comparable social and emotional appreciation.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the status of the housing estates is unclear. They are not defined as neighborhoods by enclosures with walls, fences, hedges, barriers and the like. Although there are boundary systems, these do not affect the residential areas, but the districts. However, apart from the three commercial zones, the districts are multi-functional. As a result, the residential areas are partly part of an open urban space (in terms of the multifunctional features of the districts) and partly part of a closed urban space (in terms of the enclosure of the entire district). This blurred separation of urban space and communal space was part of the fate of “Holland Villa” in Shenyang, which led to the demolition of the entire estate in 2009. In a different way, however, we will also encounter this blurring in the coexistence and opposition of open city and miniaturized gates in Anting New Town in the fourth contribution to this series. Like Anting, the design of the Qingdao Eco Park still contains too much Europe and too little China. In this case, too, it is predictable that the lack of exclusivity of the residential areas will meet with reservations among potential city residents.

Urban planning context

The ambitions of a sustainable city are not only threatened from within, from the chosen spatial concept, but also from the urban planning context. Particularly noteworthy here is the position to the south of the above-mentioned roads, which attack this very location with their emissions. What is irritating about the previous framework plans is that the less emission- or noise-sensitive commercial zones are not used to shield against these impacts. In this respect, too, the chosen dispersed form seems to stand in the way of the ambitious goals.

Incidentally, our critical, rather pessimistic assessment of the project is supported to a certain extent by the performance of the shares of Sino-German United AG, Munich, which are unlikely to have given the main shareholder, Sino-German Eco Park Group Co. In February 2018, when these lines were written, the share price was just below the issue price of EUR 1.10. Currently, in May 2019, the share is only trading at around 46 cents (EUR 0.46).

As in the case of Anting and Lingang New Town, the success of the Sino-German Ecopark Qingdao also appears to be jeopardized by the urban planning design, which is crucial not only for spatial functionality but also for socio-cultural acceptance. In all three cases, the successful implementation of the objectives associated with the projects is still pending – and in the first two cases, as will be shown, it can be assumed that this will remain the case to a greater or lesser extent. The situation is slightly different in the case of the Sino-German Ecopark.

For despite all the sometimes questionable, sometimes problematic similarities that the German design background of the eco-park entails, there appear to be at least two points in which this planned city differs from the other two: Firstly, the massive impression of a ghost town characterized by perspective-less, non-speculative vacancies is missing so far. The second reason relates to the extent and intensity of the professional support, supervision and management of the urban development project. There seems to be a strong will to set reproducible impulses for sustainable urban development in China and to invest in accordance with this goal, both materially and in terms of personnel.

¹ This company is the parent company of Sino-German Ecopark Handels- und Beratungs GmbH (SGE), which in turn is the main shareholder of Sino-German United AG, both based in Munich.