GuangMing Eco City
2010-01-19 from: author:
As a result, GuangMing – which Lim dubs the 'smart city' – is entirely self-sufficient. He explains: "A smart city integrates educational, agricultural, environmental, and most importantly, social sustainability into the heart of the city. GuangMing Smart-city is a city driven by the principles of slow living, emphasising a happy balance in life that is firmly rooted in the twenty-first century."
GuangMing is made up of twelve of these circular towers rings, which are effectively self-sufficient suburbs, each of which produces its own food and contains its own shops, schools, hospitals and offices to serve approximately 14,000 inhabitants. The idea behind this is to encourage people to stay in their own locale and to be environmentally efficient, although Centres of Excellence – each with its own special feature such as a museum, university or town hall – can be found in eight of the circular tower rings, so that inhabitants have the opportunity to travel to different centres at the weekend.
The infrastructure of GuangMing is just as environmentally friendly. It is a car-free city – the only transport found in GuangMing is via biogas buggies and a sky bus, both powered by processing human and animal waste. Electricity comes from a forest of solar panels found at ground level on a huge manmade beach, surrounding a series of waterways, which are both recreational and provide a cooling element to the hot, landlocked environment.
For all its radicalism, Lim's scheme is entirely practical and can be built. This is due in part to close collaboration with environmental consultants Fulcrum and leading engineering firms Techniker, and Alan Baxter Associates. The experience has been a massive undertaking for Lim and is an astonishing achievement. Lim says: "It's not like the usual competitions or research projects I have worked on and to work for the Chinese Government is very prestigious. But whilst it was great fun it was really exhausting and very challenging."