Maintaining the villages and the local population with six new metropolitan villages

For many years, Chinese urbanization has destroyed many old villages in a global densification process. In the Yuzhong project between the Nanghe River to the hills in the south, a large agricultural valley is occupied by a series of villages. This project proposes to conserve this traditional urban precinct and at the same to redevelop a more productive agriculture program.

The urbanization process began with a specific analysis of the human installation. The model is a finger plan which begins on the Nanghe River to the hills with large land segments of alternative agriculture in relation to housing and social program in continuity with the old villages. The foundation of our strategy is to create a new model of six metropolitan villages integrating all the ancient villages.

Capturing all water resources and establish new sustainable water management

The water question for this territory is the elementary condition to maintain the population and the agriculture activity, particularly with a densification process. In this part of west China, the evaporation of water is a very complex question.

We proposed different interventions:

• Capturing the water from the hills by a series of filter block upstream in storage tanks
• Develop SAUL basins to collect filtered water and store; Cover the Saul Basins by a series of long pedestrian promenades to the Ninghe river
• Obtaining a total stored water volume of 1mio m3/year
• Using complementary water from the rain water caught on the roof of the buildings, and also transforming domestic water consumption patterns through water supply.

An articulated offer of global and local mobility services

Important infrastructures of transportation are a regular urban strategy today in many projects in China. The reduction of using cars is a great ambition in China to reduce the CO2 emission.

This urban development is a part of a larger territorial urbanization. We have taken into consideration the project already deciding two main transport networks:

• The creation of a railway station for a high speed train on the east border of our project.
• A new metro line or tramway going from the east to the west and to the north of the city.
• We propose to create more local connections for the people and for the new inhabitants: a micro-bus network for each of the six metropolitan villages; and an ambitious bicycle network connecting all the different parts of the city.