City design should strive to be more sustainable

China has achieved a lot through process of urbanization, says senior UN official

To foster a sustainable model of urbanization, China should plan cities that not only generate jobs and opportunities, but also help build socially integrated, livable, open neighborhoods, said a senior UN official.

Joan Clos, executive director of the United Nations Human Settlement Programme, told China Daily that China has achieved a lot recently in terms of urbanization, especially from an economic perspective.

"Urbanization has been used as a tool for China's development. And China's model is very successful," Clos said during his visit to Beijing on Friday. "However, urbanization is not only about work and development. There are many other things, such as quality of life, cultural identity and well-being of people.

"When you are initiating the process of development, there is always the need to foster rapid development. When you have already reached a certain level of development, then the people begin to ask for quality of life," added Clos.

"The Chinese government is looking for extending the scope of success to other aspects of urbanization."

Clos said that in the past 20 years, a trend in urbanization is to separate land use in the city, such as moving housing away from working areas to where land prices are relatively cheap. However, this model generates a lot of transportation and congestion problems for the city.

Another tradition that should be abandoned is to build mega buildings, mega roads and mega streets because they consume too much energy.

These "urban diseases", including overpopulation, traffic jams, high housing prices and environmental degradation, have been affecting the development of China's big cities for a long time. When delivering a government work report on March 5, Premier Li Keqiang declared war on "urban diseases" and vowed to improve living standards.

Clos said there is general conception in the world about how to make cities livable.

"Some countries have made some efforts to build better neighborhoods, to make us live like we live in a village, meaning knowing more about our neighbors, interacting socially, having good interactivities with the community," said Clos. "That has affected the design of the cities if you are looking for that in the Chinese model. That means that should be matter in the principle of the design from the beginning."

Contact the writers at suzhou@chinadaily.com.cn