Zhiwei Xing
Case Western Reserve University - Weatherhead School of Management
Chris Laszlo
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Along with rapid economic development and a new, large urban population, environmental problems and urban diseases have emerged in Shanghai, Shanghainese. A growing population and limited public space have created the conditions for severe air pollution, fine particle pollution and water pollution. But the governing authority in Shanghai is taking action to solve those problems. It approved the creation of Jiading Centre Park, set inside a suburban city, designed and led by a team from Sasaki of Boston, Massachusetts. A world top-tier city planning and design company, Sasaki won the bid to design the Jiading Centre Park project. Sasaki's main design idea was to rebuild large, natural wetlands and woodlands, planting thousands of new trees and meadows, restoring the ecosystem and biodiversity in the center of this city of 150,000 people. This idea included innovative ways to recycle rain and disposed sewage in the wetlands and canals, but, in its design, used the traditional Chinese philosophy of harmony between human and nature. Sasaki also used existing materials, eco-friendly materials and existing structures wherever possible.
Michael Grove is the chief director of the Jiading Centre Park project for Sasaki. He worked with his Taiwanese colleague, Ming-Jen and a project team to design a plan:
- To create a park where every corner and space is linked by walkable green passages surrounded by landscapes of trees and plants. The core philosophy of this innovation is to minimize the number of roads and minimize isolation by constructing overpasses and underpasses. There are several bisecting streets in the park communicating with most of the landscape elements and expanding the space to give the busy urban people a space to relax.
- To rebuild wetlands and woodlands with thousands of newly planted trees and meadows and to introduce new animals to the park. Sasaki rebuilt 30 acres of woodlands and 15 acres of wetlands with 21,610 new trees that are 100% native to the region, and planted 4 hectares of new meadows. And cursorial birds and fish returned to the park. "We decided to let the center of this modern and busy new city become the haven of plants and animals in which people could find the harmony of the mother nature," said Michael Grove.
- To rebuild the existing canal system in the park and new storm water recycling and sewage disposal systems to support water use in the park. The team also arranged filter runoffs alongside the canal and surrounding wetlands to improve the water quality by capturing unwanted nutrients and solids. The team removed the hardened edge of the canal to build a riparian edge; extensive areas planted with native wetland plants to cleanse the canals and to improve their biological value.
- To use as many existing materials, eco-friendly materials and existing structures as possible.
During our interview, Michael Grove and Ming-Jen said those innovations emerged, not only because of the sustainable values embedded in Sasaki's core mission, but because of their own core values. They each posses a natural sense of mission to implement designs that lead to better lives. They also emphasized they believe their team won the bid for the project, not because there's was the lowest bid, but because of the heavily embedded sustainable design language they included in their proposal, the innovative design ideas and because of Sasaki's reputation as an eco-friendly design firm.
The city of Shanghai has made ambitious efforts to become a global city where people with diverse cultural backgrounds can live harmoniously with clean air and clean water. But at the same time, Shanghai is facing severe environmental problems and urban disease.
30 million people live in Shanghai. Land development, by 2011, had reached 44% while other major cities, Tokyo at 29% and London at 23%, developed more slowly. Among Shanghai's developed land, less than 7% was open public space. How could the people of Shanghai live more comfortably, with more urban space and greens, and protect much of the ecosystem and the biodiversity in the process?
A major problem already existing in Shanghai was the environmental damage; air and water pollution and fine particle pollution. The average temperature is predicted to rise by 3.5 degrees Celsius by year 2100. The diversity of amphibian species has been reduced by 50% along with a 63% decline in avian diversity. How could Shanghai transform its development from an extensive growth mode to a sustainable growth mode?
The City of Shanghai confronted those questions when it released an ambitious project to rebuild its entire eco-system and green lands by 2040. The Jiading Centre Park project was an important pilot.
The local government in the Jiading district, which like other areas of Shanghai, suffers environmental and growth problems, hoped that building a new central park in the city would be an innovative, sustainable model to explore solutions to the problems of urban growth. Michael Grove, a native Clevelander and director of this Jiading Centre Park project, and a graduate of landscape architecture at Cornell University, immersed himself in the lifestyles and cultures of Asia. Now he spends half of his time in Sasaki's Shanghai office managing the company's large business affairs in the world's second-largest economy.
With a strong understanding of the project purpose and a delicate designing vision, Michael and his team worked with a sustainability-driven purpose to generate substantial modifications in a traditional area. The design concept is based, not only on the understanding of the modern sustainability requirements of a large urban city as well as the sustainability mission values of Sasaki, but also on a modern understanding of traditional Chinese culture such as painting, calligraphy, and dance. The park emphasizes the rich cultural heritage of the Jiading area and incorporates the Chinese traditional philosophy of building into the design language of a harmonious relationship between humans and Mother Nature. The team used natural elements such as floating clouds and flowing water, which typically are found in the masterpieces of Chinese artists. Those elements were redesigned in a modern way to show the sustainable development of a Super City. "I studied the paintings of Yanshao Lu who is a Jiading local artist," Michael said, "and implemented some of his elements into my design of this park."
As a result of an inspired vision and a thoughtful sustainability-driven design, the Jiading Centre Park project in Shanghai has successfully transformed this area of the city. Joint research by Sasaki and East China Normal University shows that the water quality substantially improved as nitrogen levels were reduced and oxygen levels improved. The research also indicates there was a significant decrease in extreme summer temperatures in the area after the park was built. The rebuilt wetlands and woodlands have become the natural habitats of several kinds of birds and other animals. The storm water recycling and sewage disposal system have decreased potable water demand by 3.3 million gallons annually. The endeavor to use existing materials, eco-friendly materials and existing structures largely reduced emissions and lowered construction costs.
Ming-Jen stressed that the main difference between this park and other traditional parks in Shanghai is the embedded Chinese culture of the harmonious relationship between humans and nature. In the middle of this suburban city, in a park where people can interact with Mother Nature by the large rebuilt woodlands and wetlands, and where traditional local cultural symbols are largely embedded, is a solution model for the urban city of the future, oriented toward people with a design that is sustainability-driven.
The Jiading Centre Park project won the Merit Award in Parks and Recreational Facilities Design presented by the Boston Society of Landscape Architects. More importantly, the success of the project has provided Sasaki with access to other large urban planning and design markets in China. Other major cities in China have consulted with Sasaki on modernization planning and old city transformation projects. Sasaki opened an office in Shanghai so it could deal with the large increase in business in China and in other Asia-Pacific countries.
During our interview, Michael and Ming-Jen described their view of a better world. “A world where people could live without feeling the impact of climate change and environmental issues and a world where urban people could have more open space to interact more with each other and the nature.” Now, in the park, people wandering the paths can see birds fly over the clean canals and large wetlands, can smell the scent of the trees and flowers in the woodlands. Under the blue sky, children are playing and running with laughter, and lovers are floating their boats on the canal. It is such a quiet space right in the middle of the noisy urban city. This park definitely is a good example of an effort aimed at attaining the UN's goals of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. The innovations in the park could also give us answers to the UN goals of protecting, restoring and promoting sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems and halting biodiversity loss. With the innovations of protecting ecosystem and biodiversity, the park is now a landmark and showing dynamic prospects for people living in this better city for their better lives.
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Michael Grove, Principal of Office in China
