Containing the Conurbation
The Dynamic City Foundation provides smart solutions for Beijing’s growth problems.
It only takes two visits to Beijing’s suburbs on successive months to see just how quickly the city is growing. Since the 1980s, the expansion of the city’s footprint from a once compact capital to what is commonly known as the Beijing pancake has dramatically accelerated. According to current expansion rates, the total surface of Beijing’s development zones by 2030 will fill the entire rural area between Beijing and Tianjin.
In conjunction with the explosion of Beijing’s urban mass, its inhabitants are now relocating to the city’s margins. They consist partly of middle- and upper class citizens, and partly of the floating migrant population. As a result of this relocation, more roads are being built to transport ever growing numbers of cars further distances. Beijing’s famous ring roads, numbered 2 to 6, already have a combined surface area substantially larger than the entire historic heart of the city. However, it has already been proven that simply adding more road surface will not reduce congestion, nor increase accessibility.
So, how can the Beijing pancake be contained and further dislocation of communities prevented? The Dynamic City Foundation (DCF) is a research and design institute focused on the rapid transformations of China’s urban landscape. In 2003 the DCF started the Urban China 2020 project; an in-depth study what the effects of China’s flash-urbanization are and how designers can respond to this process. To achieve this the DCF established a collaborative research wiki (www.BURB.tv) where visionaries, architects, planners and social scientists could post their ideas and proposals.
One of the most interesting proposals posted to the wiki has been the “D-rail project”. This is a hybrid transit system that accelerates pedestrians to the speed of a train by combining travelators (flat escalators) with Maglev (magnetic levitation train) technology. The D-rail would hover in a glass tube over Beijing’s Ring Roads; a small one on the Third Ring road, and a larger stacked system on top of the Fourth Ring Road, comprising retail, a rooftop park and arms stretching out to surrounding cityscape.
Neville Mars, creative director of DCF, is heavily involved with the D-rail project. He comments, “The only natural way to curb Beijing’s expansion is by stimulating its growth according to its anticipated round footprint – not outwards, but by coaxing growth inwards along the backbone of mass transportation, along the D-rail. Within the Third, Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads densities should not decrease but increase. People should not be moved out of the historic center, but rather the commuter-dependent office buildings relocated, beginning with Beijing’s four hundred car-swamped government buildings and institutes. Moving urban function out of the center is the most effective way to curb peak congestion. Their new location: the Fourth Ring Road. Their new mode of transport: the D-rail.”
Image source: Dynamic City Foundation
Further info: burb.tv