Chongqing Yuelai International Exhibition New City
Core idea
Expo/convention-led new district
Why it matters
Key node on upper Yangtze metropolis
Description
Chongqing Yuelai International Exhibition New City is a district developed from the 2010s by the Chongqing municipality around the city's international expo and convention centre, on a peninsula of the Jialing River north of the centre. The plan uses exhibition, conference and cultural facilities as anchors for a new mixed-use quarter, combined with hillside landscape and riverfront works, and the area has also served as a national pilot zone for sponge-city stormwater techniques.
Significance
Yuelai illustrates the Chinese variant of event-led urbanism, in which recurring trade-fair and convention infrastructure, rather than a one-off spectacle, is deployed to open a new urban front in a fast-growing inland metropolis. Its role as a demonstration area for ecological stormwater management gives it additional significance in debates on greening megaproject development along the upper Yangtze.
What shaped it
- World becomes majority urban (2007)
- Global financial crisis (2007–2009)
- China's reform & opening (1978)
Sources
- https://english.liangjiang.gov.cn/2023-06/28/c_898176.htm
- http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/regional/chongqing/liangjiang/2014-01/22/content_17237843.htm