Forest city is designed to combat air pollution

Stefano Boeri|Stefano Boeri|Stefano Boeri

An architect has been commissioned to design a city in China to beat pollution, which will be completed in the next three years.

Everyone agrees that something needs to be done about pollution, and the general opinion is, the quicker the schemes are implemented the better it will be for all around the world. China – one of the largest polluters – is now implementing a range of measures to help, and has hired the Italian architect Stefano Boeri to build them a forest city in the mountain area of Guangxi in the southern part of China. Boeri shot to architectural fame in 2014 when he created Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest), the visually stunning twin residential towers in Milan.

Titled Liuzhou Forest City, the development in China will be a fully functioning city, complete with offices, houses able to home 30,000 people, hotels, hospitals and schools. Every building, street and pathway will be entirely covered by plants and trees. This will help to absorb an estimated 10,000 tons of CO2 emissions and 57 tons of pollutants each year, as well as producing around 900 tons of oxygen when it’s completed in 2020.

The city will contain 40,000 trees in total, as well as almost one million plants of over 100 species. It will also be fully sustainable, as it will use a geothermal source for air conditioning and solar panels on the majority of the roofs to collect energy.

China is working on a range of interesting and original ideas to help reduce climate change, like this bikesharing scheme, and also part-funding an innovative fabric that uses the sun and movement to generate electricity. Could this now be the shape of cities to come?