Sub topic: Evaluate approaches of protect urban forest system for city development in china
Abstract
Urbanization is inevitable trend in the world but with many problems. The core idea of sustain development is the balance between human development and environment protect, therefore, this could be a feasible way to solve the problems. This paper introduce the urban forest system focus on the values of the policy on city development, take Chinese cities as example try to evaluate the feasibility in china, analysis the potential challenge as well. Toronto and Singapore are the examples to show the huge contribution of the urban forest system to the city. Finally, this paper attempts to give conclusion that even operate the system could face challenges in china, it is still a feasible way to figure out the problems which urbanization brings, and it is valuable in long term.
Introduction
As far as we know, urbanization has been taking place rapidly in developing countries over the last five decades. An important feature of urbanization in the developing countries is the fact that the rate of growth of large cities has been greater than that of small cities. (Mathur ,1982).
Therefore, we can describe urbanization as the rapid growth of the city, in term of physical expansion of the urban area with high increase of the population. The high population is the significant feature of urbanization, which was the outcome of high levels of rural-to-urban migration in combination with the high rates of natural increase of population. As well, more and more new cities were born in china, like Shenzhen and Haikou. As we know, cities play a vital role in national economic growth, especially in developing counties, because main business activities incur in cities. Due to the well established business network, cities create most of the national output by performing crucial services and production functions.
Thus, at the beginning, urbanization is making huge contributions to city development. However, rapid urbanization in developing countries also bring negative consequences: highly intense population with inadequate accessing to basic urban services like education, medical insurance , primary healthy care , water supply, housing and so on, pollution, frequently overcrowded transportation, low employment , slums and squatter settlements . These drawbacks now are the obstacles for economic development. As well, more and more people who live in the city suffer from depression due to the high stress and pressure. In order to eliminate the negatives of urbanization and make the city continue development in a right direction which is not sacrificing environment for the purpose of economic development.
From this point of view, sustainable development could be a feasible method. According to Brundtland report, sustainable development means “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland, 1987,p43). Thus, cities can be designed and managed in a way that resource use and pollution are reduced, leading to the harmonious development between man and natural.
In this essay, I will take China’s city as an example. Firstly, give a short introduction of china's urbanization, and compare it with the European's urbanization. Next, give a solution to eliminate the drawbacks of urbanization which we called urban forest system to reduce the contradictions between man and natural, and refer to the successful cases of cities in Japan, Canada, and Europe. Finally, evaluate the feasibility in China, and estimate the potential challenges of using this solution as well.
Main body
Short introduction of China’s urbanization and the main symbols:
When we talk about China’s cities, the first impression come to our minds is crowdedness, particularly in the eastern cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Due to the natural environment, China’s population distribution is extremely unbalanced. In more detail, in the western part of china, population density is low while 90% of Chinese people live in the eastern or middle part of china, and most of the cities own high-density population. Furthermore, in the past 30 years, China’s reformation and opening policy was mainly implemented in the eastern cities. Therefore, with the deepening of reform and opening in China and the impact of globalization, the urbanization incurs in China’s eastern cities with a high pace.
By contrast to European’s urbanization, demography factor could not be neglected when the urbanization happens in the third world, particularly in China which is the largest country in the world in term of population. Furthermore, due to the traditionally high birth rate, although the one-child policy contributes significantly in the decrease of the population growth in China, the population growth still maintains at a high level. Thus, combining the high population and the rapid face of urbanization, the impact resulting from urbanization are becoming more complicated in terms of social, economic, and physical problems, such as the increasing incident of urban poverty, and inadequate access to shelter and urban basic services. For example, large scale numbers of people migrate from rural to urban, which makes the crowed city more intense. Therefore, city’s development goes beyond the city’s limit, especially in limit resource like water supply, transportation and land.
One of the significant contradictions was population boom-up with land limit. On one hand, housing in cities is inadequate. Therefore, the price of housing is really high, and a lot of people can not afford it. This leads to some social problems like the big gap between wealthy people and poor people. On the other hand, more and more high buildings were established while the public facility such as park, sports centre, and greenbelts were becoming less and less. Due to the small space, large work load, crowded transport, most urban inhabitant is under high stress and pressure. In addition, in high density cities, the output of carbon-dioxide is extraordinary high due to the number of cars owned. Consequently, the air quality is low. Thus, from the sustainable development point, to reduce the conflict between the human and urban environment and to improve the urban residents’ quality of life, urban forest system could be a good method to balance the human and environment contradiction.
Urban forest system
Introduction of the urban forest system
The concept of “urban forest” was first created and developed in North American in the 1960s, then was spread into Europe, but it was long time till it was accepted. It could be defined as “the arts, science and technology of managing trees and forest resources in and around urban community ecosystems for the physiological, sociological, economic and aesthetic benefits trees provide society”(Miller, 1997). Urban forest focuses on the role of trees as an essential part of urban infrastructure with aim of improve urban environment that included the populations of trees in urban area, tree-plant and maintenance, and forest conservation. In order to improve the natural resources using and urban environment managing level., nowadays, more and more cities decision makers use this method to resolve the urban environmental problems
Benefits
As we know, urban forest is used as a solution to resolve the problems in cities, therefore, the function of the system supply should frequency relate to human activities. The essay will analyze the benefits of the urban forest system offered in terms of natural environment and social values.
Natural environment values:
Firstly, air pollution in cities is causes by the transportation and human activities. Due to the vegetation’s respiration , the trees absorb huge carbon dioxide , and release oxygen. The processing of gas exchange reduces air pollution in some distant. As well, special kinds of tree could absorb some harmful gas, thus we could select to plant them. On one hand, by improving air quality in cities, human health is improved. Furthermore, the decision maker could analyze the geography position of the city, and plant different kinds of trees for special purposes. For example, in the southeast coastal part of China, due to the fact that the strong typhoon hit the cities every year, it is better to choose special kind of tree to establish the windbreak and sand-fixing forest, improve the erosion control level, reduce the natural disaster.
Secondly, urban forest system has played an essential role in micro-climate regulation in cities. The term is called “the urban heat island effect” because the huge heat was absorbed by the surface, and human activities also consume large energy. In the studies of U.S. cities, some of these differences have been quantified, and expressed as changes compared with surrounding country side: air temperature is 0.7 degree higher measured as the annual mean, solar radiation is reduced by up to 20%, and wind speed is lowered by 10-30% (Haughton and Hunter, 1994). The urban forest system would help reduce the difference in urban area. For instance, trees could be used for shading house in summer and reduce wind in winter. In addition, they are also a good choice for decoration in the city. According to the study, a single tree can transpire 450 litre of water per day, which consumes 1000MJ of heat energy to drive the evaporation process (Hough, 1989).Therefore, vegetation plays a role in reducing summer weather. From this point of view, it could also decrease the volume of heating by air-condition consuming. Furthermore, it could decrease the chemical substance which called Freon that could harm ozonosphere. Therefore, urban forest system could create chain reaction which in the long term protects our environment.
Thirdly, noise pollution does harm to peoples’ health. If people live in the huge noise environment, they could suffer from some diseases in ears, and in worse situations some nervous system disease. Technology innovation provides some methods to reduce the noise, like noise insulation glass. However, this is limited to indoors. Through planting trees along the streets, noise as well as dust could be reduced effectively.
Social values
A crowed city is full of stress to its citizens. Inhabitants’ depression comes from the high pace of life style, more specifically, working pressure, less space for rest, and less time for communication. More and more urban citizens are in sub-health status. This unhealthy life style affects negatively their work devotion. According to the studies, “Vegetation is essential to achieving the quality of life that creates a great city and that makes it possible for people to live a reasonable life within an urban environment” (Botkin and Beveridge,1997). Therefore, if the natural environment of a city is amazing, it would improve an inhabitant’s connection to the city, and improve the satisfaction with his life. For example, Park is a good place for rest, where people can play games, communicate with other people, hear birds singing and water’s sound and get relaxed in the beautiful place. Visiting green plants could release the stress of life, and renew mood, getting new energy for life.
Green space also contributes to human’s psychological well-being. For example, the study on recovery of patients in a hospital showed that patients with rooms facing a park had 10% faster recovery and needed 50% less strong pain-relieving medication compared to patients in rooms facing a building wall (Ulrich, 1984).
Furthermore, urban forest system plays an important role for children cognizing the natural ecosystem, cultivating the concept of protect environment from young, and also good for cultivating children’s character.
Compare to other countries and feasibility in China
Urban forest system was successful operation in North America. For example, Toronto’s urban forest system was well-established. Many trees planted in resident yards and lining the public streets, beautify the public spaces. As we know, Singapore was famous for its “Garden city”. Even though it is small-size country, the city planners use all of the resource, from road to park, to improve the forest coverage rate. Definitely, the residents got lots benefits because of the amazing environment. For example, the beautiful city with high reputation of environment attracts massive people to visit the country which stimulate local tourism. As well, the beautiful city own huge potential in absorbing large foreign investment that could supply lots job opportunities to the country.
Japan is also a small-size country with high density population, but, even in Tokyo, you can find big parks for people to rest. The country’s forest coverage was 70% in 2009. Therefore, we can learn from the successful cases, learn the modern concept in the field like “roof greening”, and the advanced management experience as well. Devote making efforts on city development, particularly in new cities.
For example, the technology of “roof greening” was used in some cities like BeiJing and GuangZhou, as the following pictures show:
http://www.jgdj.dl.gov.cn/news/news/article/show.asp?id=9724
In addition, big park was established in some cities, as the picture shows:
www.wenmin.com. (MInjiang Park , FuZhou, Southeast coastal city)
Therefore, the urban forest system was operated in some cities, and the system could be spread into more urban area.
Potential challenge
The challenges of performing urban forest system could be in terms of natural environment and social environment. First of all, operating the urban forest system includes tree planting, and maintenance, protection, and controlling of the city’s tree resources. Planting trees relates to the physical environment of the city such as: the soil quality, air condition included the light and the moisture of the air,and water supply.
Furthermore, if choose the tree that could absorb the harmful waste air, probable the odour of the trees would be not good, then the people don’t like it. As well, when people walk in the street, it is probable that the bird’s solid waste dumps on your shoulders, and park could be dangerous in dark nights.
The significant challenge of operating urban forest system could be in terms on the land limitation and inadequate financial support .For example, to establish park or lake would need large tract which is limited resource particularly in cities. Also the high cost could not be neglect.
Therefore, how to reduce the cost on establishing and maintaining the urban forest system and improving the management level of city planning, all of these, could be potential challenges to the city managers.
Conclusion
Urbanization is an inevitable trend in the world, and it would continue at a pace in developing countries. Thus, we should not neglect the drawbacks that urbanization produces. This essay suggested that the notion of sustainable development was a good method to solve some of the problems.
From the point of improving the quality of life of residents who live in urban area, reduce the extreme increase of population contradiction with limit landscape resource, through urban planning, improve the utilization ratio of urban natural resource, enhance the feel of happy of the dwellers who live in city, then achieve the goal that harmonious development between man and natural.
It is obvious that urban forest system services contribute to the quality of urban life. For example, air quality is improved in some extent, noise pollution is reduced, recreational and culture values were created. As cities grow at a rapid way in the next decade, the value of urban forest system would be more understood and widely used in city design. In the long term, the urban forest system plays an important role in city development due to its function in coordinating the tense relationship between human and urban environment.
However, plant trees, establish park, cultivated land to make more greenbelt, wetlands, and lakes, all of these need land source, it is hard to achieve in some cities which land-resource is extremely limited. Furthermore, the effects were just to reduce but not eliminate the problems in a short time. Hopefully, the awareness could be improved by decision maker in term of the important role of urban forest play in city development, then enhance the land use rate, make rational decision on land-use planning.
To sum up, although operating the urban forest system in china is with challenge, it is still worth to do it, because it is a feasible way to solve the problems in some extent and the huge contributions to the city.
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