21st Century (2000–present)

Hefei Binhu New District

2005– · China · East Asia – China · Transit-oriented urbanism and corridor planning · Planned by Hefei Planning
Planning map (guihuatu) of Hefei Binhu New District, photographed on site.
Planning map (guihuatu) of Hefei Binhu New District, photographed on site. · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Panoramio user JASON.Z (via Wikimedia Commons)

Core idea

Lakefront CBD and eco-corridors

Why it matters

Anhui growth pole

Description

A large urban extension launched by Hefei's planning authorities in the mid-2000s on the northern shore of Chaohu Lake, creating the Binhu New District as a new centre for the capital of Anhui Province. The plan combined a lakefront central business and administrative district with extensive residential quarters, structured by ecological corridors and green wedges linking the city to the lake, and served by new metro and road infrastructure.

Significance

Binhu exemplifies the wave of new-district building through which second-tier Chinese provincial capitals repositioned themselves as regional growth poles during the 2000s boom. Its lakefront and eco-corridor framing reflects the increasing environmental rhetoric of Chinese new-town planning, while the district also features in discussions of debt-financed expansion and the pace of urbanisation in inland China.

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.