Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-24hb2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T19:34:18.030Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 11 - The Success of SUCCESS: The Chinese Village as Catalyst of Future Chinese Sustainable Cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2012

Get access

Summary

Introduction

China is currently undergoing a program of massive, unprecedented urbanization and industrialization. Within the next five to ten years, a minimum of 200 million Chinese farmers will leave their villages to become factory workers in hundreds of new and greatly enlarged towns and cities. Accompanying this shift are strong indications of massive unsustainability from an economic, social, cultural and environmental point of view. The way in which these Chinese cities are conceived and constructed will have portentous consequences not only for China but for the rest of the planet as well (Figure 11.1).

It is vital that rapidly industrializing societies such as China's pursue sustainable alternatives to this ill-conceived development; in recent years, we have seen some institutional and governmental interest in China in a search for such alternatives. With a keen understanding of the importance of identifying pathways to mitigate unsustainable development in China, the European Commission sponsored a five-year research program addressing future prospects for sustainability in the numerous small villages in which 70 percent of the Chinese people still live.

SUCCESS is an acronym for “Sustainable User's Concepts for China Engaging Scientific Scenarios,” (ICA4–CT–W2002–10007). The SUCCESS project's goal was to explore the prospects for a sustainable future for the Chinese village as a social and cultural question as well as from ecological and economic points of view. (For a recently published work generated as an outcome of this project, see: Dumreicher et al., 2005; Dumreicher and Prañdl-Zika, 2008; Dumreicher, 2006; Marschalek, 2008; Mortimer and Grant, 2008; and Shaw, Hunter and Mortimer, 2007).

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×