Favourite cities of tomorrow

CHINA. New Urbanism is a rising architectural movement promoting the idea that we can build upon the richness of the past as well as sustainable innovations of the present to design great new communities for the future. Emphasizing the importance of walking and local businesses to the life of any neighbourhood, the movement began 20 years ago in North America as a reaction to soulless suburban sprawl eating up the landscape around every city..

New Urbanism is now going global. A leading advocate is Prince Charles, who is building his own sustainable community in southern England—Poundbury, which captures the vitality and charm of traditional English villages. People today, he has said, “want to live in mixed-use… communities, where one doesn’t have to use two litres of petrol to get one litre of milk.”

One of the world’s most ambitious New-Urbanist developments is planned for China’s Chongming Island, near Shanghai, reports the electronic newsletter of the Michigan Land Use Institute (December 4, 2005)—www.mlui.org. The plan calls for eight cities of 75,000 each and 40 farming villages of 5,000, connected by public transport and bicycle paths. In contrast to the sprawl characterizing most of China’s new developments, the rural landscape will be largely preserved for agricultural and natural uses..