Fourteen districts in Beijing recently unveiled online their urban plans, highlighting the efforts for the optimization of capital functions, the improvement of city capacity, ecological protection, and green development. 

Gathering public response 

The urban planning development of individual districts was commissioned by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning and Natural Resources, and undertaken by district governments.

The district plans are in accordance with the requirements of the city's overall plan, and will provide guidance for the formulation of county-level plans.

To improve public understanding of a district's urban planning, the government released pictures with notations online to explain the functions, development goals, scales and spatial patterns of each district.

At the same time, information sharing activities were held in districts such as Fangshan and Chaoyang. For example, at the No. 2 exhibition hall of the Chaoyang Museum of Urban Planning, visitors are provided with the district's draft plan brochures in both Chinese and English.

"We want more people to know about Chaoyang's future with such bilingual brochures," said Ni Chongxia, deputy director of the Chaoyang branch of Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources. The translation of the brochure was said to take two weeks, in an attempt to make it professional, precise, and vivid.

Cutting urban-rural construction land use

In line with Beijing's master plan, city functions and ecology are prioritized in district-level plans.

According to the city's master plan, Beijing is the first city in China that has proposed to decrease the use of land in urban and rural construction. The city expects that by 2020, its construction land will be reduced from 2,945 square kilometers in 2017 to about 2,860 square kilometers, with an average annual reduction of about 30 square kilometers. 

To achieve this, each district is required to cut its annual construction land use, an index that will be integrated into the government performance appraisal system, according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning and Natural Resources. Meanwhile, the supply of construction land use will be proportionally decreased.

Mentougou district plans to reduce urban-rural construction land to about 70 square kilometers by 2035, a reduction of 3.3 square kilometers. 

On West Chang'an Avenue in Mentougou district, a parcel of land is about to go on the market as construction land. While decreasing 100,000 square meters of construction land, the district turned a wide spread of this piece of construction land into a green space of over 1 hectare, so as to provide recreational areas for nearby residents.

Chaoyang district will cut construction land to 269 square kilometers by 2035, a decrease of about 71 square kilometers.

Highlighting water protection

On Dec. 20, 2018, Fangshan district's urban planning authority released a draft plan and began soliciting public opinions. The plan maps out Fangshan's objectives of building itself into a core district in the Beijing-Baoding-Shijiazhuang region, a district in southwestern Beijing that prioritizes ecological conservation and management, a demonstration district for innovative development of science, technology and finance, as well as a district with burgeoning cultural tourism.

Ecological protection is treated as a top priority in the urban planning of Miyun district. Home to the Miyun Reservoir, a major source of water for Beijing, the district is regarded as a most important base for water protection and ecological management.

According to the urban planning commission, Beijing is implementing an all-region urban planning. Apart from the 14 district-level plans, downtown Beijing's Dongcheng and Xicheng districts will also formulate plans to optimize capital functions and preserve the city's old areas and legacies. Meanwhile, implementation of the sub-center's urban plans are being carried out, while plans for the city's iconic Central Axis and Chang'an Avenue will be studied.

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