New forum launched to tackle China’s infrastructure challenges

In September, over 200 delegates including city leaders from 14 countries and 85 senior Chinese city officials gathered in the rapidly growing western Chinese city of Chongqing for the first City Infrastructure Forum, China. Jonathan Andrews and Roman Rollnick report.

In an opening address setting the tone of the conference, Huang Qifan, Mayor of Chongqing, cited the constant struggle to balance his city’s ecological and economic needs with rapid urbanisation. By 2020, the urbanisation rate will exceed 70 percent of the population.

“By then, the municipality will have a population of more than 30 million, with the main urban area, district county towns, small towns and surrounding rural areas having populations of roughly 10 million each, to basically form the megalopolis of Chongqing,” said the Mayor.

The Mayor said that Chongqing had been known as the “foggy” city because of its industrial heritage with the city being blighted for a third of the year with smog. In the last ten years, it has invested 150 billion yuan (US$ 24 billion) in environmental pollution control.  “Chongqing has completely shaken off the name ‘fog city’,” said the Mayor. “Fine quality urban air days last year reached 340 days, with PPM of 2.5.”

As well as closing down outdated production sites including steel mills and cement production plants, the city has moved industry and transport towards the use of clean energy.

“All coal-fired boilers use natural gas instead and the transformation to CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) has been implemented for nearly 30,000 buses and taxis with 150,000 old vehicles taken off the roads,” explained the Mayor. “As a result, the urban clean energy utilisation rate has reached 95 percent.”

Ten years ago, Chongqing’s water quality was in the bottom three of Chinese cities. “In the past six years, we have achieved 100 percent compliance with long-term stream water quality in the Three Gorges Reservoir, the best level among the seven major river systems in China.”

Infrastructure investment has seen the city increase the length of railway track to 3,000 km, six times what it had been in 2003, with airline throughput tripling in the same period to 22 million passengers and 3,000 km of expressways being built or under construction. The challenge is to combine further infrastructure development with environmental protection. “Low carbon, green, ecology must become the distinctive feature of Chongqing’s urbanisation,” said Mayor Huang.

The funding deficit for infrastructure

Keynote speakers at the opening session took up this theme stressing the pressing need for cities to exchange ideas and incorporate the latest environmental thinking and technology into every aspect of urban life.

Jatin Modi, President of the All India Institute of Local Self-Government, said such challenges made it even more important for cities to cooperate more closely than ever before. Speaking in his capacity as President of UCLG ASPAC, the largest city and local government association in Asia-Pacific, Dr Modi said: “Local government is the base route of democracy. Local government must be responsive in a fully participatory fashion to promote a green economy. This forum comes at an opportune time.”

Modi said most urban problems stemmed from a lack of policies and programmes to develop infrastructure combined with a need for private and donor financing.

“Asia requires more than US$100 billion annual investment for coming decades but only US$40 billion has come so far from development banks and other donors,” said Modi.

Joining the mayor in welcoming delegates, Li Xiaolin, President of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) said China’s urbanisation remains a severe challenge.

“Our organisation was established in 1955, and in the past 60 years we have already established friendly relationships with 500 organisations in more than 100 cities in the region,” said Madame Li. “This forum is a great opportunity to build cooperation between international organisations and China.”

International companies including conference partner Shell shared their own initiatives and ideas to tackle the forum’s theme of ‘connecting local governments with global solutions’. These ranged from providing a better connection with citizens through technology, to efficient and sustainable public transport and the use of data to drive smart grids.

Mobility solutions

Wolfgang Schuster spoke of his experiences in terms of mobility management as Mayor of Stuttgart. “Mobility is linked to economics, ensuring that everyone can participate in the economy, by being able to get to their job and schools,” said Schuster. “We have to integrate urban planning and traffic planning. Even though I come from a city with a strong car history we encourage non-motorised transport, and I’m glad that only 50 percent of people in Stuttgart use the car for everyday use, the rest use public transport, cycle and walk.”

Alexon Khor, General Manager for Low Carbon Solutions at Shell, provided some interesting insights on urban transport through a presentation prepared with Embarq whose China director Zhang Haitao chaired the mobility session. The presentation was based on a two-year study undertaken with the China State Council’s Development and Research Centre.

“One thing we found was the lack of linking urban design and spatial issues in city mobility planning and this is an impediment,” said Khor. “It’s been relatively recently that these two issues have been merged.”

Modal integration was also important in achieving the economic and social benefits referred to by Schuster.

“Physical connections are important and it is key for cities to become competitive that interconnection allows for greater economic potential” said Khor. “What we also found confirms what Dr Schuster mentioned earlier about providing services close to transport hubs and within reach of all citizens. In Stratford, the major transport hub for the 2012 Olympics in London, you can find different transport modes all linked into a major new shopping centre.”

Khor said it was clear that we had to find alternative to the car. “Pollution costs 3-4 percent of GDP, due to the impact it has on the population’s health, lifestyle and productivity,” explained Khor. “I think the best examples [of mobility solutions] are those cities that just don’t move the problem somewhere else but deal with the issue of pollution and mobility.”

Cities who have adoped to Bus Rapid Transit systems are clearly in that bracket. Khor demonstrated how advanced BRT systems have been very effective in moving a large volume of people around quickly, cheaply, and in an environmentally friendly way (see graphic for mode comparisons).

Guangzhou is a model city in China for transport integration incorporating a BRT system. Luo Liangxin, Transport Committee, Municipal Government of Guangzhou described how the city was one of the first to integrate the BRT with metro, bus and cycling systems.

“Along the BRT corridor we have 130 bicycle stations with 5,000 bicycles provided to the public,” said Luo.

Guangzhou’s system has adapted the cases from other countries to provide a bespoke system suitable to the characteristics of the city and its population.

“In terms of its design and operational management we took note of other projects,” explained Luo. But whereas the systems in Curitiba in Brazil and Bogotá in Colombia are trunk feeder operation systems, Guangzhou developed a direct service system without passengers having to change as frequently as is the case in a solely trunk feeder system.

“After South Africa it is the fastest growing BRT system in the world and its passenger flow is three times faster than that of other parts in Asia,” said Luo. “An average trip compared to before BRT saves passengers 6.5 minutes in time which since 2010 means 32 million hours saved. We have converted this to a social economic figure/value, meaning a boost to the economy of 800 million yuan.”

Global perspectives

Day two opened with speeches from international city organisations including Peng Yan, Director for East Asia for C40, Bernadia Irawadati, Secretary General of UCLG ASPAC and Wolfgang Schuster, Vice President of UCLG and President of the Council of Municipalities and European Regions.

C40 has begun a new phase of trying to integrate more member cities especially from China. “We want to do peer-to-peer exchange and on the ground city reports in East Asia, and provide groups of experts for specific city entailing research and knowledge management,” said Peng.

C40 is working with 18 development projects worldwide under the Climate Positive Framework, none of which has completed but which are in different phases of the framework.  “In China, we are in discussion with the China Development Bank to promote this framework,” said Peng. “To access Climate Positive, a city has to be a member, then you (the city) can get support from C40 to work out a detailed plan through the C40 Climate Positive Framework.”

UCLG Vice President Wolfgang Schuster spoke of the need for a new global governance system for cities with three goals: to share common responsibility for economic growth, to promote fairer globalisation and to fight poverty and share prosperity.

“Horizontal networks are very important but we need a vertical network for the future of local-global cooperation,” said Schuster. “We need to start at the local level, with civil society and the private sector working together. We need a strong base and a bottom-up approach. As cities become more and more global, they can be partners in a global governance system”

Liu Baochun, Director of the Foreign Affairs Office for Guangzhou Municipal Government, completed the panel on global cities by announcing that the second Guangzhou Awards for Urban Innovation would take place in November 2014 and he urged more cities to take part to exceed the 153 who participated in the first edition. Liu reflected the thoughts of Mayor Huang in terms of the challenges facing Guangzhou.

“The planning of infrastructure development must consider all the elements of environmental protection,” said Liu. “As the new port is being built [in Guangzhou], we are considering the ecosystem and the GHG emissions, and also other aspects such as nature and biodiversity.”

Avoiding a Detroit

Moderating a panel on city investment, Jamil Anderlini, Beijing Bureau Chief of the Financial Times, said the world had many lessons it could learn from China, especially on local government financing and their debt loads.

Adolfo Guerrero, Head of the Cities Development Initiative for Asia, which is based in Shanghai, explained how the CDIA provides assistance to medium-sized Asian cities to bridge the gap between their development plans and the implementation of their infrastructure. The CDIA is a regional initiative established in 2007 by the Asian Development Bank and the Government of Germany, with additional core funding support of the governments of Sweden, Austria and Spain and the Shanghai Municipal Government.

“We focus on helping cities prioritise infrastructure investment, prepare feasibility studies, and link them to finance,” said Guerrero. “We are a small team working throughout Asia and have developed a number of toolkits to spread out this knowledge in cities.”

The organisation is helping municipalities in Asia in particular to develop public-private partnerships, (PPPs), and has published a special guide offering local authorities innovative ways of how to go about a potential PPP.

It is one of the few guides that are specifically targeted at city officials, such as mayors and council members, as well as senior technical staff in different sectors (e.g. water, energy, roads, ports) that are just beginning to look at PPP options. A recent example was a new integrated management solid waste system in Guangzhou.

Other speakers in the session included Oliver von Sachs, Managing Director of Euro-Sino Invest, who described a model new small industry park developed using a green approach in Shenyang, northeast China. Known as the EU China Sustainable Urbanisation Park, the idea he said has high-level European Union and Chinese political support. “We aim to broaden the platform of cooperation between the European Union and China.”

His remarks and ideas were backed up by Christophe Waldersee, Project Director for International Affairs at the China City Development Foundation.  He spoke of the need for strict – but not rigid – urban plans, and innovative financing. During a question-and-answer session with the audience, he said the deterioration of Detroit was a “very interesting and a frightening example” for cities in the developing world: “What I think other countries, especially emerging markets can learn from Detroit is how to keep attracting investors. It does not stop with your garden being green. If you run out of jobs, people will run away. Likewise if your city is not welcoming enough. That must be frightening for a lot of Asian mayors.”

Smart cities

A session on Smart Cities looked at how cities can incorporate big data into improving productivity.

“The trend going forward is for cities to open up their data to enable innovation, new services and more value added projects,” said Alexon Khor, General Manager, Low-Carbon Solutions, Shell. “In Vancouver, they use 3D visualisation and see which buildings are efficient and those which aren’t, and which roads are congested. This allows the city to use ‘surgical’ and precise investments to solve these.”

Cynthia Chen of Oracle said that before the Internet, governments already had a large amount of data, but it wasn’t shared. Data sharing by cities and access to data through sensors and cameras could facilitate citizens’ mobility and lifestyle leading to apps for citizens to use for parking or for reporting noise, pollution or flooding.

Similarly in the area of electricity supply, smart grids allowed providers to tailor supply and deal with interruption issues. “Nowadays with our smart solutions a family does not need to call us to say they have no electricity, we know straight away from the smart grid,” said Edward Cai, Director, Smart Infrastructure, Schneider Electric.

Cai said smart technology was important not only in terms of electricity but also water and energy. “We need energy saving solutions, through transport, smart services and buildings, but we need to integrate all these sub areas into one. In China our CO2 emissions have already reached 9.3 million tonnes.”

Schneider Electric has provided smart grids to 10 cities in southern China and Cai said the challenge now is to provide integrated smart grids for new forms of power such as hydro, bioenergy and solar.

“We also need to change people’s behavior and interaction with electricity in their usage,” said Cai. “We need to use the smart grid as a driving force for city development.”

The final session was a case study based on Yixing, the city in Jiangsu province, chosen as a pilot by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development for its Urban Infrastructure Initiative. Representatives from Siemens, Schneider Electric and Aecom talked delegates through the steps taken by the companies in tandem with the city government to set out a plan for sustainable development of Yixing. Although different cities face different challenges, Yixing was an important symbol to other cities in China.

“In China, how we improve our water use efficiency and create a better environment for all our people is a big challenge,” said Zhai Qi, Executive Secretary General of the China Business Council for Sustainable Development. “We have different cities with their own challenges and their own environments but how we make our cities more sustainable is a topic for all of us.”

Mumbai to host next forum

Mumbai, India, was announced as the host of the next City Infrastructure Forum during a gala dinner at the end of the first China forum.

“The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), is dedicated to bridging China with other countries, especially between local governments and cities,” said Zhang Ruoning, Deputy Director, CPAFFC in her closing remarks. “It is through such institutions like United Cities and Local Government Asia Pacific (UCLG ASPAC), and this forum, that ideas can be gathered about the development of cities that then facilitates the cooperation between cities, enterprise, international organisations, and academia.”

In preparation for the next forum, Zhang Ruoning called for future participants to not only provide solutions and ideas but to aim for the inclusion of details of how to achieve this.

“The demand from cities is what we should work for,” she added. “What we do not have are the details, such as a roadmap or detailed plans. This is probably a challenge for all the future participants and a new thinking pattern for the organisers.”

Keen to see this unfold in the next edition of the forum was Liu Qiang, Vice Mayor of Chongqing, who accepted the invitation to attend the Mumbai forum during the gala.

“This was not just another conference or talk shop, it was the start of a process of engagement of ideas with local governments and the private sector to continue the dynamic dialogue between the two,” said Peter Woods, Emeritus Mayor and Ambassador of UCLG ASPAC. “There are already plans to continue this forum in China, India and the other emerging countries of Brazil and South Africa. The future is not North America or Europe. The future will in fact be driven by Asia, Latin America, and the revamped Russia and South Africa.”