Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
new cities, to cover 15 percent of the island. Each community will consist of
walkable and accessible districts that will accommodate eight hundred
thousand people to live and work. But, despite this ambitious plan, it has
been put on hold. h e main architect of the plan, SOM's Philip Enquist, cri-
tiques how the plan itself has been shelved by the Shanghai government.
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Like Dongtan, the master plan has fallen by the wayside in the sea of com-
plex internal local and regional politics, not always apparent to outsiders.
conclusion
What then can we make of the failure of Dongtan and the Chongming Island
master plan? Are the various agents of these failures indicative of any larger
trend? Is there any lesson that can be derived from their lifecycles? On the one
hand, failure is not surprising, particularly in the context of experimental
high-stakes architecture, only a tiny fraction of which is ever built. But, given
all that Dongtan was supposed to be and the changes it was meant to usher in,
what are the lessons? Arup's Peter Head maintains that despite Dongtan's
apparent failure, its infl uence is nonetheless signifi cant: “Dongtan showed
that it is possible to develop sustainable cities, which encourage the use of pub-
lic transport, recycle their waste, use natural ventilation in buildings and use
large proportions of renewable energy. h ese cities will be clean, quiet, unpol-
luted and exist in
harmony
with the natural environment” (emphasis added).
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Dongtan failed to materialize owing to not just narrow political reasons
but also a whole suite of broader cultural and ideological factors. h e main
problem is the ways in which the eco-city model itself depends on segregat-
ing nature and environment into a particular place, and the eco-city model's
fundamental unquestioning acceptance of technology and engineering as
the solution to environmental crises. h at is, Dongtan's essential purpose is
not environmental but rather to function as a pragmatic and technical solu-
tion to Shanghai's numerous environmental and political problems associ-
ated with urbanization and development.
