
We spotted this new super green city development model over on Inhabitat that will support 350,000 residents in Tianjin. The model places a strong emphasis on landscaping as residential towers rise amidst the parks, promenades and valleys that create the plan’s primary network. Designed by Surbana Urban Planning Group, the scheme divides the city into seven sectors which vary in terms of landscape and programmatic offerings.
More images and more about the plan after the break.

Organized into seven parts, the plan will boast a Lifescape, an Eco-Valley, a Solarscape, an Urbanscape, a Windscape, an Earthscape and Eco-Corridors that will offer residents a different landscape ranging from the stepped, terraced greenery of the Earthscape to the more futuristic soil-shaped mounds of the Lifescape. While some areas, such as the Urbanscape, will be more compact with higher density buildings, the plan also provides areas for smaller developments, such as its Windscape section.
Users will be encouraged to take advantage of the city’s light rail system to navigate the differing sections, and the public system will help to drastically reduce the city’s carbon emissions.

In addition to the extensive use of landscaping, the project also incorporates sustainable technologies – solar and wind power, rainwater harvesting, desalination, to name a few.
The project is an interesting attempt to tie the necessary variety of urban buildings together by a cohesive landscaped thread. The strength of the proposal lies in the ability for the landscape itself to become a flexible entity that is also defined and shaped to offer different experiences to users.
This plan is expected to be completed in 2020.
- The Lifescape
- The Solarscape
- The Urbanscape
- The Windscape Corridor
- The Earthscape
- Overview
- The Windscape
- Aerial View
- The Urbanscape
- Eco-Valley
Images from Inhabitat via OpenBuildings















Nice project. I like how each part of the design has a unique character and urban quality. http://on.fb.me/holcim-awards
have nothing to say~
ANOTHER load of “green” architectural BS.
Whats ecological about this when China already has uninhabited speculative ghost cities?
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1975397,00.html
What crap.
This may be speculative but do you not think this is the general direction we need to head for? Or at least aspire to achieve.
What do you see as the “general direction”? “…a different landscape ranging from the stepped, terraced greenery of the Earthscape to the more futuristic soil-shaped mounds of the Lifescape…”? “Futuristic” shaped soil mounds? What is that? Is that really your idea of a high-minded ecological development? I see a bunch of glass skinned high rises. Since when is a glass curtain wall, possibly the worst building envelope known to man–in terms of energy conservation, an ecological enclosure for a building? Does putting a bunch of water thirsty greenery around it make it ok?
You’re such lemmings.
wish it is a wonderful project