CONTENTS DIARY OF EVENTS - The Urban Design Group

INTERNATIONAL
Tianjin Port, Artificial Island
China is booming and finally magazines, papers and TV programmes in
Europe have started to notice. While newspapers are filled with articles
about Shanghai and Beijing, a new generation of hot spots is quickly
emerging and the chances are that you have never heard of them – or
do you know Ningbo, Chengdu, Wuhan or Chongqing?
Another fast-growing city that barely makes it into the news is
Tianjin, located halfway between Beijing and the Bohai Sea in North
East China. Tianjin features an extensive colonial heritage and has one
of the largest old British quarters in Asia as well as French, German,
Russian and even Belgian, Italian and Austro-Hungarian concessions.
During the Ming dynasty, Tianjin rose to prominence as a river port for
vast quantities of rice and grain, transported here from southern China.
Today, Tianjin is a bustling port metropolis of 5 million people (10
million if you count the whole municipality). The largest in Northern
China, the port has been moved to the sea 50 km east of the city, but
it keeps fuelling the city’s rapid development. Its handling capacity
has made record growth in the past decades, with its annual capacity
surging from only 10 million tons in 1984 to 200 million tons in 2004
(2,000%). The container throughput alone has increased by 25 per cent
just in 2004.
Next to the port is TEDA – Tianjin’s extremely dynamic ‘Economic
Development Area’. Here you can see the China of tomorrow – shiny new
buildings, spotless streets, neat housing areas, meticulous landscaping,
a golf course and an abundance of new factories all around.
COMPETITION TO PLAN FOR THE FUTURE
To accommodate the anticipated growth, the local authorities have
decided to extend the port by reclaiming land from the Bohai Sea to
create a vast artificial peninsula. An international competition with
participants from Britain/ China (Scott Wilson), Singapore (Surbana),
Australia (ARM) and the Netherlands (Royal Hakoning) commenced in
July 2004 and has been won by Scott Wilson’s Tianjin office.
Scott Wilson took an interdisciplinary approach and teamed up
experts from the UK and China. While British experts for port planning
and urban design were involved in the initial concepts, the design
development was carried out by the local team in Tianjin consisting of
both Chinese and foreign staff.
10 | Urban Design | Spring 2005 | Issue 94
Now, try to imagine the sheer scale of the undertaking: An artificial
peninsula of 34 square kilometres (3,400 ha), running from north to
south 10.7 kilometres long (6.6 miles), and 3.0 kilometres wide (1.8
miles) from east to west. Its entire western half will be occupied by
vast container terminals and logistics facilities. For the eastern half,
however, the authorities had different plans. The existing 80 kilometre
long seafront of Tianjin municipality is badly used – a vast treeless
expanse of salt fields, industrial sites and lots of mud. As the east shore
of the peninsula will be the only major access point to the open sea
for the entire region, the authorities sensed an opportunity to create a
unique location for tourism and business.
THE WINNING PROPOSALS
Our general concept keeps the container port as a continuous stretch of
land in the west (facing the existing port), which can be divided flexibly
into cargo terminals with a total length of 7.8 kilometres. Access is via
a new urban expressway and a cross-harbour tunnel, both connecting
directly to a planned new motorway to Beijing.
For the eastern area, the masterplan breaks up the development into
several distinct mixed use ‘towns’ or ‘settlements’, divided by generous
green wedges but linked by the continuous waterfront access and a
central LRT spine. This provides a strong basic structure with possibilities
for flexible, phased development. Driving the ‘Green City Island’
development theme, there are ecological measures such as wetland areas,
use of alternative energies (wind turbines and solar power), extensive
surface water attenuation areas, and desalination works. While current
Chinese planning policy heavily favours private vehicles, the masterplan
gives greater priority to public transport, with most development within
5-10 minutes walk of a LRT stop, as an extension of the existing light rail
system via TEDA east of Tianjin, to create an extremely convenient direct
link from Tianjin city centre right to the peninsula and its attractions.
In the north, next to the motorway, there is a gateway district with
office and service sector buildings, accompanied by logistics and light
industry. Its neighbour is a high-tech research and development park
for alternative and sustainable energy sources and marine technology.
Further south along the shore, there will be residential areas mixed with
tourist accommodation.