In Print: Fantasy Islands: Chinese Dreams and Ecological Fears in an Age of Climate Crisis

It is easy to paint a black-and-white picture of China’s environmental policies. But in Fantasy Islands, Julie Sze is able to bring a more nuanced view. The professor from the University of California, Irvine, looks at eco-cities and explores prominent examples in China that involved global engineering and design firms. Sze examines why the experiments failed, and in the end she urges “healthy skepticism” about the eco-cities trend.

The eco-cities of Shanghai that are the focus of the book offer a useful case study—not only because Shanghai is a major economic powerhouse in the world’s second-largest economy, but also because eco-cities are being developed in India, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. In China, Sze writes, “Shanghai’s eco-cities, eco-islands, and eco-developments have been given almost magical status as the ‘solution’ to global environmental problems.”

Dongtan, on Chongming Island near Shanghai, was supposed to be the world’s first great eco-city, with a population of 50,000 by 2010. It was to be built by Arup, a U.K.-based global planning, engineering, and design firm, for the Shanghai Industry Investment Corporation (SIIC), the investment arm of the Shanghai municipality. Dongtan would demonstrate that economic development and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive.

Sze’s father is from Dongtan, which was rural when he was growing up. It has large areas of wetlands. As an eco-city, Dongtan would be well served by public transit, have an impressive recycling program, and derive energy from renewable sources. It would include a large conservation area of farmland and aquaculture, and the wetlands would be preserved.

But, as Sze continued her investigation on site, it became clear that “the stories of Dongtan . . . are about managing and mythologizing Shanghai’s hyperurbanization.” Dongtan was seen as a pure, clean counterpart to Shanghai, but not much thought was given to what the people who lived there wanted. Now, the would-be eco-city is losing residents.

For those in Shanghai and the United Kingdom who were planning the development of Dongtan into an eco-city, the real goal was profit, Sze says. Wetlands and open space were seen as the area’s “natural capital.” The plan with Dongtan, as with other eco-cities around the world, was to depend on technical and engineering innovations to deliver new visions of a green future. The result would be like a mini-Vancouver or a mini–Hong Kong, with intensive real estate development, rising land values, and skyrocketing home prices.

In other words, nature is no longer valued for its environmental benefits, but for its profit-making potential. It is looked at through a cost-benefit lens.

The failure of Dongtan cannot be laid simply at the doorstep of local and state politics, as the transnational firms would like to do. The problem, Sze says, is the eco-city model itself. It segregates nature and “the environment” into one area, and the city overall puts unending faith in technology and engineering as the solution to environmental crises.

Sze looks at other examples of eco-development around Shanghai—Chongming Island, Huanbaiyu eco-village, and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Of particular interest is her description of Shanghai’s failed “One City, Nine Towns” project, an effort to draw residents from the city’s congested center to the outskirts. Each town represents a town in a different European country, from Thames Town (a model of an English village) to An Ting, a “German” town linked to Shanghai’s auto production industry.

In An Ting, many of the houses have been sold, but no one lives in them full-time. The homes have been bought by businessmen who occasionally stay there, by auto workers whose primary residence is elsewhere, or by investors. The town is a 45-minute commute from central Shanghai, with no subway connecting them.

The Nine Towns project, like the Shanghai World Expo, was supposed to show the sustainable city of the future. But that vision has no room for manufacturing or industry, or any of the other messy elements that make a city a city.

“A properly situated sustainability,” Sze writes, “is one that takes power and people seriously, rather than as an afterthought to . . . techno-fetishism.” It is one thing to draw on a blank slate. But the real challenge is dealing with the people and environment that are already there and have their own needs. In Fantasy Islands, the author raises some excellent questions about global efforts to deal with climate change through technological solutions.

Joan Mooney is a longtime writer and editor who has contributed to On Common Ground, the smart growth magazine of the National Association of Realtors, and to AARP Bulletin.