Winner of a Merit Award in the Student – Analysis & Planning category of the 2020 WLA Awards.
DREAM SPACE: ECO-UNIT Mode Evolution Strategy Based on Guiyu’s “Urban Minerals” Demonstration Base
Background
Guiyu Town is located in Chaoyang District, Shantou City, Guangdong Province , China. In the 1990s, E-Waste Dismantling became the main business of about 80% of residents in Guiyu. It is the largest E-Waste Dismantling center in China and also over the world. A research report published in 2010 showed that about 81.8% of rural children under the age of 6 in Guiyu suffered from Lead Poisoning. The rivers and farmland here are seriously polluted.
Since the 12th Five-Year Plan, the completed Guiyu Circular Economy Industrial Park and Sewage Treatment Plant have improved the environment, while the situation of farmland pollution caused by the long-term condition is still severe. The main sources of pollution in Guiyu soil and river sediments are Cu, Pb, Zn, Cr, and Cd, which are all higher than the Provincial Soil Background Value, and some plots are even more than a thousand times.
Planning Framework
We chose the community of E-Waste Dismantling in the countryside along the river bank in Guiyu Town as an “Eco-Unit”, which consists of Basic Farmland, Garbage Storage Houses (specific buildings or abandoned building used by villagers to store and dismantle garbage), and Residential District. We will transform these site through two strategies: Waste Utilization and Ecological Restoration.
With the intervention of Landscape Architecture, we hope to construct an ecological restoration model, Eco-Unit, that can be replicated, promoted, and used for reference; to promote Guiyu ’s application for a national “Urban Mineral” Demonstration Base in the future, through infrastructure sharing and environmental protection treatment centralization; and to transform the E-Waste Dismantling Community into a demonstration area mainly based on handicrafts and tourism. We hope that the Eco-Unit of “Dream Space” could realize our dream of a better life, dream of a better city, and dream of a better nation.
Strategies
1. Waste Utilization Strategy: time-based restoration through 4 types of unit approaches: ecological purification, family agriculture, activity space, and science popularization exhibition;
2. Ecological Restoration Strategy: Ecological restoration for soil pollution is mainly divided into 3 types: microbial, plant and animal (earthworm). By selecting specific plants to purify heavy metal pollutants and planting pioneer trees for first-stage restoration, common crops can be planted after a certain period of restoration.
DREAM SPACE: ECO-UNIT Mode Evolution Strategy Based on Guiyu’s “Urban Minerals” Demonstration Base
Project Location: Chaoyang District, Guiyu Town
City: Shantou City, Guangdong Province, China
Team Member: Yubing Yang, Yunshuang Wang, Jianan Deng
University: Beijing Forestry University
