Toward a Sustainable City: A Scoping Review of Eco-Cities Development and Practices in China

Abstract

With the rapid development of urbanization, China is facing many challenges on environmental problems, such as air pollution, water deterioration and urban heat island effect. To cope with the urban ecological crisis, China has paid more attention to eco-city construction. This chapter traces the origin of eco-city concept at the first part, and then reviews the development of eco-cities in China, in which several typical eco-cities have been taken as case studies to illustrate the practices of eco-city construction. The results showed that there are three periods of eco-city practice development in China: eco-cities (1990s), low-carbon cities (2000s) and smart-eco cities (2010s). In the period of eco-cities, the focus was paid on ecological and environmental issues, and the concept of “harmony between humans and nature” was widely applied to guide eco-city construction. In the period of low-carbon cities, attention was paid to cutting greenhouse gas emissions amid the severe domestic environmental situation and international societal pressure. In the new trend of smart-eco city construction, great importance has been attached to the city with green and ecological concepts, Chinese trying to combine the eco-cities with smart technologies. It is worth noting that the eco-city construction in China has always led by the central government and acted as a top-down approach, which also caused some problems among the practices.