515
18.5.4 Tianjin Eco-City
Tianjin Eco-City is a joint project between the governments of the People’s Republic
of China and Singapore located just outside of the Chinese city of Tianjin on the
coast of the Bohai Sea. Begun in 2007, the goal of the two nations is to create a new
sustainable eco-city from the ground-up, in response to rapid urbanization and environmental degradation in the region. FEW innovation in the Tianjin Eco-City project is driven by binational governmental cooperation supported by a wide range of
private-sector partnerships.
In the master planning process for the Tianjin Eco-City, FEW nexus opportunities were identified to develop a new city that would serve as a sustainable, healthy
environment for its residents, and as an industrial hub of the green economy for the
two countries involved. One aspect of the Eco-City that relates directly to the FEW
nexus is its water-energy resource loop that treats wastewater via anaerobic biodigestion to extract methane gas to be used for energy production.
Similar to the planning that Curitiba undertook in the late twentieth century, the
Tianjin Eco-City Master Plan calls for high-density development nearest to major
transportation axes, to promote population density near the City center and high
levels of public transit use among residents (the policy criterion). The Plan also calls
for the City being structured into discrete but connected cumulative units of varying
scales, including eco-cells, eco-communities, and eco-districts from smallest to
largest. Five major eco-districts will surround a green-blue eco-core to give the City
its overarching structure. The green-blue eco-core is envisioned as both a space for
recreation, transportation, and stormwater management.
18.6 Conclusion
The above case studies—both domestic and international, including Portland, a
growing American city, and Detroit, a post-industrial legacy city, Curitiba, a ‘retrofit’ city, and Tianjin Eco-City, a new city imagined from the ground up—provide
only a glimpse into the possibilities of integrated urban FEW innovations. These
cases provide an illustration of integrated FEW supply solutions, both centralized
and decentralized, implemented at different scales from the micro (facilities: urban
farms in Detroit) to the meso (city systems: Curitiba’s stormwater parks and transit
system and Portland’s energy-producing pipes) and macro (city/metropolitan
region: Tianjin Eco-City) levels, driven by different actors including the private sector, public sector, and civil society.
Key Points
• Urban systems that are largely physically separated from the agricultural
resources needed to support them exhibit dynamics and drivers that are inherently different from the dynamics and drivers in rural systems. Food, energy,
and water supply chain management in cities are particularly critical in large
18 Cities at the Nexus
18.5.4 Tianjin Eco-City
Tianjin Eco-City is a joint project between the governments of the People’s Republic
of China and Singapore located just outside of the Chinese city of Tianjin on the
coast of the Bohai Sea. Begun in 2007, the goal of the two nations is to create a new
sustainable eco-city from the ground-up, in response to rapid urbanization and environmental degradation in the region. FEW innovation in the Tianjin Eco-City project is driven by binational governmental cooperation supported by a wide range of
private-sector partnerships.
In the master planning process for the Tianjin Eco-City, FEW nexus opportunities were identified to develop a new city that would serve as a sustainable, healthy
environment for its residents, and as an industrial hub of the green economy for the
two countries involved. One aspect of the Eco-City that relates directly to the FEW
nexus is its water-energy resource loop that treats wastewater via anaerobic biodigestion to extract methane gas to be used for energy production.
Similar to the planning that Curitiba undertook in the late twentieth century, the
Tianjin Eco-City Master Plan calls for high-density development nearest to major
transportation axes, to promote population density near the City center and high
levels of public transit use among residents (the policy criterion). The Plan also calls
for the City being structured into discrete but connected cumulative units of varying
scales, including eco-cells, eco-communities, and eco-districts from smallest to
largest. Five major eco-districts will surround a green-blue eco-core to give the City
its overarching structure. The green-blue eco-core is envisioned as both a space for
recreation, transportation, and stormwater management.
18.6 Conclusion
The above case studies—both domestic and international, including Portland, a
growing American city, and Detroit, a post-industrial legacy city, Curitiba, a ‘retrofit’ city, and Tianjin Eco-City, a new city imagined from the ground up—provide
only a glimpse into the possibilities of integrated urban FEW innovations. These
cases provide an illustration of integrated FEW supply solutions, both centralized
and decentralized, implemented at different scales from the micro (facilities: urban
farms in Detroit) to the meso (city systems: Curitiba’s stormwater parks and transit
system and Portland’s energy-producing pipes) and macro (city/metropolitan
region: Tianjin Eco-City) levels, driven by different actors including the private sector, public sector, and civil society.
Key Points
• Urban systems that are largely physically separated from the agricultural
resources needed to support them exhibit dynamics and drivers that are inherently different from the dynamics and drivers in rural systems. Food, energy,
and water supply chain management in cities are particularly critical in large
18 Cities at the Nexus