21st Century (2000–present)

Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City (Alibaba Xixi area)

2011– · China · East Asia – China · Innovation districts, knowledge corridors, and economic clustering · Planned by Hangzhou Govt

Master site plan of the Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City west of the city centre: a central lake and park system with canals, dense innovation and research blocks, and wooded residential districts. · © Heller Manus Architects — used with credit · Heller Manus Architects — Hangzhou Future Tech City master plan

Core idea

Innovation district west of center

Why it matters

Tech-driven urban expansion

Description

Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City is a planned innovation district launched around 2011 by the Hangzhou municipal government on the city's western fringe, in the Xixi/Yuhang area associated with Alibaba's headquarters campus. The plan lays out an extensive new quarter of research campuses, incubators, housing and services, structured by metro extensions and green corridors, as a spearhead of the city's technology-driven expansion.

Significance

The district illustrates the Chinese model of state-planned innovation urbanism, in which municipal land development and a flagship private firm are combined to manufacture a knowledge cluster at metropolitan scale. It is often discussed alongside Hangzhou's rise as a platform-economy capital, and in debates on whether such tech new towns produce urbanity or corporate enclave.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →

hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.