Sustainable chinese eco-cities. Density at human scale

A growing housing demand will be fostered by the migratory flows prospected for the reduction of restrictions related to the hukou system that regulates working permits (2013 ECFIN report), to the extent that in 2030 half of the city population will be composed by migrants. Although eco-city still do not provide a fully satisfactory answer to the need for social housing, these will be a key element for future urban development. Opening up to migrants implies the need for a more in-depth intervention on the construction, where social housing may replace those high-quality residential dwellings of the eco-city, often too expensive for the real market demand. Local authorities’ efforts directed to sustainable cities are significant and aim to produce a reliable duplicable model. However private investments are mainly driven by speculative reasons which favor standardized projects serially repeated and completely not contextualized, that may turn out to be ecologically and economically unsustainable. Indeed despite some best practices, the eco-city are designed more to draw the market attention than for local needs. The article wants to compare the results of some eco-city project in terms of livability and density of proportions, with those acknowledged factors of urban degradation that already affected the functionalist neighborhood of the International Style, built in the 50s to face the European housing emergency. By demonstrating the excessive standardization and functionalism of some of these new settlement, it is proposed to restore a human scale and to conceive the eco-city starting from the end-users and the context.A growing housing demand will be fostered by the migratory flows prospected for the reduction of restrictions related to the hukou system that regulates working permits (2013 ECFIN report), to the extent that in 2030 half of the city population will be composed by migrants. Although eco-city still do not provide a fully satisfactory answer to the need for social housing, these will be a key element for future urban development. Opening up to migrants implies the need for a more in-depth intervention on the construction, where social housing may replace those high-quality residential dwellings of the eco-city, often too expensive for the real market demand. Local authorities’ efforts directed to sustainable cities are significant and aim to produce a reliable duplicable model. However private investments are mainly driven by speculative reasons which favor standardized projects serially repeated and completely not contextualized, that may turn out to be ecologically and economically unsustainable. Indeed despite some best practices, the eco-city are designed more to draw the market attention than for local needs. The article wants to compare the results of some eco-city project in terms of livability and density of proportions, with those acknowledged factors of urban degradation that already affected the functionalist neighborhood of the International Style, built in the 50s to face the European housing emergency. By demonstrating the excessive standardization and functionalism of some of these new settlement, it is proposed to restore a human scale and to conceive the eco-city starting from the end-users and the context