China's 'eco-cities' struggle for traction

Wang Lin needed a change. The crushing air pollution and gridlock traffic in his hometown of Hangu, an industrial district in the northern metropolis of Tianjin, made him anxious and sometimes ill.

Then he heard about the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city. According to its marketing literature, the 246.92 billion yuan (HK$310 billion) development, a joint venture between the governments of China and Singapore, will one day be a "model for sustainable development" only 40 kilometres from Tianjin's city centre and 150 kilometres from Beijing. To Wang, 36, it sounded like paradise.

Last year, he moved into an inexpensive flat in one of the city's half-occupied apartment blocks. As a freelance translator, he doesn't mind that most employers are at least half an hour away by car. He loves the relatively clean air and the personal space. But he has his complaints.

By the time the city is complete, probably in 2020, it should accommodate 350,000 people over 30 square kilometres. Five years into the project, however, only about three square kilometres have been finished, housing 6,000 permanent residents. There are no hospitals or shopping malls. Its empty highways traverse a landscape of vacant mid-rises and dusty construction yards.

"This place is like a child; it's in a development phase," Wang said. "But it's chasing an ideal. It's the kind of place where people can … pursue their dreams."

Last month, Beijing announced its new urbanisation plan, a massive feat of technical and social engineering which will move more than 100 million country-dwellers into cities in the next six years. The question is how. The current development model has proved environmentally disastrous; ghost cities and towns spur fears of an impending real-estate meltdown.