Much public attention is drown to the tower cranes, the thoundering machines, and shuttling cars at the construction sites of the Yichang New District attracted, under the planning of building Yichang into a modern megacity.
Mao Chuanqiang, Deputy Mayor and Member of the Municipal Standing Committee and Director of Yichang Municipal Office for Advancing the Construction of New District, said that under the guidance of the “Four Priorities”, the New District construction insists on the conceptions of ecology, the people’s livelihood and science and technology, and strives for building clear mountains, blue waters and green city, making it a paradise suitable for living, working and traveling.
The mechanism innovation of Yichang New District has seen a rapid development of the construction in the district since October, 2013. Currently, 122 projects have been launched in succession, with the total investment of 56.32 billion RMB.
To build the Green New District with ecological concept
After a rain, the Wujiagang District looked fresh. Under the fiery building momentum, the construction of a wide asphalt road has been accelerated. The road was a meandering road with ups and downs. It was built along the mountains and integrated naturally with the surrounding landscapes, full of ecological characteristics. This road is Huaxi Road - an important part of Yichang expressway network.
In the initial design of Huaxi Road, it was planned to be straight and flat, which means it would be costly and may bring more damage of the mountain. Then, the design was optimized in line with the deployment of the Municipal Committee and the government. It not only decreased the excavated volume of soil, but also saved almost 80 million yuan.
It is not by accident that the construction plan was changed for ecology. As the mayor construction area, Dianjun District has been a green ecological county in Hubei Province, examined and appraised by experts of the National Housing Construction Department on November, 2013. Therefore, it became an important responsibility for Yichang government to protect and upgrade the ecological county.
It is easy to say rather than to do. Designers encountered problems in the design of Jiangcheng Avenue. There were more than 150 high voltage towers along this 8 kilometers road, which would affect the direction of the road. A substantial migration line tower would raise the capital investment and the heavily excavated mountains would undoubtedly violate the ecological concept.
Under this circumstance, the principle of "ecological network first" had been implemented unwaveringly and unswervingly in Yichang New District, and the relevant departments cooperated and innovated ideas to build the road between wires and telegraph poles, which made the ecological road on earth and the terrestrial corridor in the air form a unique landscape. The Jiangcheng Avenue had a unique lingering charm of straight lines and curve lines, high lines and low lines. Costs of relocation and reconstruction had been reduced from 70 million RMB to 9.6 million RMB.
In the construction of the New District, the concepts of green and excellent, good and beautiful were all pursued in public buildings such as the Olympic Sports Center, Yichang Planning Exhibition Hall and the "four big gardens" under constructions.
"Ecology is the most significant feature of the Yichang New District." Mao Chuanqiang, Municipal Party Committee, vice mayor noted that in the "six most important ones". And he said that we should implement practical actions like cutting down trees more cautiously, digging fewer mountains and filling no lake to lead the Yichang New District to the green New District and ecological New District.
Building the harmonious New Areas for improving people’s livelihood
After a day of work, Hu Xinghua, an over 60-year old citizen, went home. His house was located in the East Garden in Lianfeng Country, Wujia County, Wujiagang District.
He has a spacious and bright apartment with 120 square meters, decorated in European style.
He said, ＂Our government wanted to build Yichang into a modern megacity. According to the housing removal and compensation policy, the government gave me three replacement houses. I lived in one house, and my son lived in another. We are preparing to rent the last house. "
Moreover, he gave up farming and worked as a security guard, enjoying a city life. His son established an earthwork construction company and a decoration company, and enrolled more than 80 employees.
Seeing a lot of buildings rising straightly from the ground at the front of his house, he could not help saying: “the Government is so generous for building replacement housings at the downtown area.”
About the sitting of the manufacturing housing, Mao Chuanqiang, Municipal Party Committee, Deputy Mayor has explicitly pointed out that: " We should be willing to take the high-quality lands, the lands with basic good conditions, the lands with relatively good matching conditions, and the usable lands in the overall urban planning to build the manufacturing housing, so that the people can fully enjoy the construction achievement of the New District." This policy has won the understanding and support of the masses, many residents even moved out initiatively. Meanwhile, the＂all-round responsibility system＂model of land expropriation had been first innovated and introduced in the Yichang New District, governments, neighborhoods and communities of all districts were involved in the construction of the New District, which achieved a good situation of building the city with the efforts of all citizens.
Thanks for those actions, the requisition of lands and the construction of the replacement housing are promoted to continuously step forward. Zhou Qing, the secretary of the Xiling Area and the associate director of Yichang Municipal Office for Advancing the Construction of New Areas, introduced that last year, 3,122 households’ lands owned by the state were expropriated in the downtown; 25,359 mus (16,906 million square meters) collective-owned land were expropriated; 3,469 buildings and 170,000 square meters of all illegal buildings were demolished.
Smooth progress of relocation has provided guarantees to the accelerated promotion of the project. At the same time, a large number of projects servicing the people\'s livelihood, such as the Three Gorges Hospital, the new campus of Yichang No.1 Senior High School, the Activity Base for Teenagers, the Olympic Sports Center and the Yichang Planning Exhibition Hall have been completed gradually driven by the " Three Big Measures" of " big enterprises, big tenders, all-round responsibility system", making a Happy New District with good teaching conditions, good housing conditions, good wages and benefits and good medical conditions.
To build the Intellectual New District by science and technology
In the large essay activity regarding I make suggestions on the Construction of Yichang’s New Area last year, there is a strong demand for “founding the City’s intelligent platform and building the smart New Area”.
To realize this object, the foremost point is the guarantee of the strong science and technology industries. Therefore, in the process of the plan and construction, the Electronic Information Industrial Park was set up in Dianjun Area for attracting more and more science and technology enterprises to invest in Yichang to strengthen Yichang’s science and technology industries.
In the replacement housing estate last year, the investment in network infrastructure accounted for a large part. After finishing it, every household in the New Area estate will have network. At the same time, with the rapid development of the mobile internet, the wireless network has become the vital part of the modern city, and Yichang has launched the plan of the construction of the wireless city, serving the people in New Area with better, faster and more stable wireless network.
More modernization means more energy conservation and insisting on the sustainable development. At the initial construction, the Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development organized experts to study and enforce relevant measures regarding the application of the renewable energy of buildings.
The construction of the architectural application system of renewable energies has been put into the engineering design, diagram trial, supervision, monitoring and inspection and other regulatory aspects to improve the application level to promote the contiguous development of large-scale applications. The architectural applications of renewable energies have been effectively promoted in the affordable housing and the public welfare projects to carry out the centralized demonstration of the solar hot water systems and the ground-source heat pump systems. The promotion has been increased among all national renewable energy demonstration counties and the study of the distribution and the application of the renewable energy resources has been strengthened.
Besides, Yichang New District will be a new area with smarter and higher information level, such as smart public transportation like BRT in Dongshan Avenue, supporting smart public transportation management system, and electronic offices.
A large charming city carrying the green dream, the happy dream and the intellectual dream is rising quietly among the mountains and rivers in the capital of hydroelectric power. (Reporter: Shi Youyi, Lei Pengcheng, And Correspondent: Xin Quxuan, Lin Hongyan)