During the past decade, Beijing is caught in a strange and vivacious cycle of ‘more roads more congestions’. With newly built highways everywhere in the city but worsen traffic jams day by day, the city is becoming increasingly polluted and hostile to urban life. With average 2000 new cars hit the road every day, Beijing’s crisis cannot be solved by simply building more roads.
Honorable Mention | RTFA 2014 Awards
Category: Urban Design Concept
Participant Name: Open Architecture
Country: China
Our research has also shown that public parks and facilities are severely lacking in the city of Beijing. Parks are a rarity, and only about 10% of social needs can be accommodated in current public facilities. On the other hand urban street life is largely missing in a city with roads designed for automobiles only.
Realizing that the pattern of urban development in Beijing needs to be seriously overhauled, yet the policy makers still seem clueless of what to do, we hope to gradually build up a think tank, using 2nd Ring 2049 as a seed project to involve concerned designers scholars and alike, at the same time promote public awareness of better urban life. Our aim is to find radical but tangible strategies for our city of tomorrow.
The vision is set for 2049, 100-year anniversary of communist China, with the hope for injecting idealistic and forwarding thinking into today’s architectural discourse, which is more often than not driven by the practicality of past decades’ economic boom and the fashionable form making.
