bs_bs_banner Area, 2014, doi: 10.1111/area.12128 Modelling green urbanism in China C P Pow and Harvey Neo Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570 Email: powcp@nus.edu.sg Revised manuscript received 28 May 2014 This paper examines how the modelling of green urbanism is spatially manifested in flagship eco-city projects such as the Sino-Singapore Tianjin eco-city (SSTE) project. As part of a multi-scalar process that taps into a host of mobile policy networks and ‘quick fix’ urban policy solutions that circulate around the world, such eco-flagship prestige projects serve as powerful sites for the convergence of the boundaries between the social and technical and are highly symbolic places charged with the formidable task of constructing purportedly new forms of ecological urban imagineering and socio-ecological lifeworlds. But to the extent that these eco-flagship projects are often underwritten by state-business growth coalition and driven by (green) entrepreneurial objectives, these urban ecological spaces are also necessarily implicated in broader normative debates and the challenge of constructing sustainable and socially just urban futures. As David Harvey has pointed out, insofar as all environmental-ecological arguments are arguments about society and, therefore, complex refractions of all sorts of struggles being waged on other realms, eco-cities in China both reflect and embody the multiple contradictory tensions inherent in contemporary Chinese society. Key words: green urbanism, urban sustainability, China, policy mobility Green modelling as ‘urban sustainability fix’ What exactly is an (Asian) eco-city and how does it speak to broader debates on the modelling of green urbanism and the circulation of (contested) forms of sustainable urban future? Drawing on insights from the literature on policy mobility debates, this paper examines the construction of eco-cities and its ecological imagineering in China. To the extent that ‘nature’ (and alongside its social construction and production) has always been a necessary precondition for capital accumulation, sustainable development itself can be interpreted as part of the search for a spatio-institutional fix to safeguard growth trajectories in the wake of industrial capitalism’s long downturn, the global ‘ecological crisis’ and the rise of popular environmentalism (Krueger and Gibbs 2007; While et al. 2004, 551). In this context, While et al.’s (2004) notion of urban sustainability fix is a useful starting point to understand the governance dilemmas, compromises and opportunities created by the current era of state restructuring and ecological modernisation. Drawing on David Harvey’s (1982) insight on the spatial fix – more specifically the idea that the geographical reproduction of the capitalist mode of production requires the fixing of spaces (only to have it destroyed or devalued at a later point), the notion of a sustainability fix draws attention to the selective incorporation of ecological goals in the greening of urban governance and the transformation of the city landscape in the image of a purportedly sustainable ‘green’ city. While an effective institutional or spatial fix for a given locale, the notion of an urban sustainability fix is also necessarily part of a multi-scalar process that taps into a host of mobile policy networks and ‘quick fix’ policy solutions that circulate around the world, that in turn get internalised and recast within national boundaries. Here, the recent burgeoning scholarship on policy mobilities or policy tourism is instructive (Ward 2006; Peck and Theodore 2010; Gonzales 2011). As McCann and Ward have shown, in the world of ‘fast policy transfer’, policy actors including politicians, policy professionals, urban planners, consultants and activists act as transfer agents in ‘shuttling policies and knowledge . . . around the world through conferences, fact-finding study trips, consultancy work’ (2011, X). Seemingly moving seamlessly from place to place, ‘tried and tested’ policy solutions and urban ‘best practices’ are being touted to address a range of issues from urban regeneration (e.g. the ‘Bilbao effect’ or ‘Barcelona model’), business improvement districts, welfare provision, crime and drug control, urban transport management, enhancing quality of life and creative The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2014 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 2 Modelling green urbanism in China economy and, of course, urban sustainability practices (see Peck 2002 2005; McCann 2004; Gonzales 2011; Ward 2010). In the arena of environmental policymaking, cities such as Curitiba, Portland, Copenhagen and Munich have often been held up by global ranking agencies as ‘model cities’ to be emulated (or ‘copied’) by other aspiring green cities. In the 2012 ‘Asian Green City Index’ commissioned by Siemens, cities such as Singapore, Yokohama, Tokyo, Osaka, Taipei, Hong Kong have been listed as Asian role models. What these rankings hope to achieve is not just an attempt to provide an ‘objective’ ranking of sustainable urban practices around the world. These rankings have often been strategically appropriated by entrepreneurial urban regimes as a means of branding cities in the bid to create attractive healthy places to entice capital. These so-called best practices and international rankings have quickly become ‘industry standards’ that urban authorities readily adopt as a way of benchmarking and ‘improving’ their city’s relative performances in the global arena. In this respect, cities can no longer be considered as analytically discrete objects but are constituted through complex inter-connections with other places that are in turn shaped and transformed by mobile policy networks (Massey 2010; Ward 2006 2010). The adoption and enactment of these mobile policies, to be certain, is not a wholly deterritorialised process but entails converting and translating these globally mobile policies into what are deemed ‘locally appropriate’ strategies and, in the process, reconfiguring the territoriality and relationality of these urban places. As McCann and Ward have argued, to the extent that urban policies remain bound up territorially to a whole set of locally dependent interests and urban growth coalitions, ‘policy making must be understood as both relational and territorial, as both in motion and simultaneously fixed, or embedded in place’ (2011, xv). In other words, notwithstanding the universalistic tendencies of such global green urbanism practices, policy mobility does not occur in a socio-political vacuum. Hence, it is timely to ask how urban policy mobility and, more specifically, the modelling of green urbanism in China are shaped by the local particularities of place and history, as much as contemporary global forces such as inter-urban referencing and learning (Roy and Ong 2011). The term urban modelling suggests not only an attempt by local city officials to (selectively) adopt and emulate ‘urban best practices’ from elsewhere, but also serves as a mechanism for the local state to construct a ‘new regime of green urbanism’ by shaping, disciplining and producing particular kinds of spaces and citizensubjects deemed desirable (Hoffman 2011). In this sense, urban modelling embodies the dialectical tension between universalistic ideas of global green urbanism and Area 2014 doi: 10.1111/area.12128 © 2014 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) the territorial imperatives of local national/urban growth. However, the notion of modelling is not a foreign or novel practice in China because in both traditional Confucian and Maoist thoughts, emulating successful individuals or processes were often celebrated as an exemplary form of learning (Bakken 2000). Indeed, it may be argued that in contemporary urban China, the modelling of green urbanism is increasingly bound up with global practices of inter-referencing and the emulation of ‘successful’ cities across Asia and beyond. As Hoffman noted: ‘urban governments across China have been encouraged to reach environmental targets by adopting measures and governmental rationalities proven elsewhere’ (2011, 57) to the extent that the inter-referencing of cities has come to be defined as an end in itself. In this sense, urban modelling is hence tied to place-marketing and driven by the logic of urban entrepreneurialism. It is in this context that this paper situates the empirical discussion on ecological place-making and the search for an urban sustainability fix in Chinese cities. As will be shown, the mobilising of green urbanism and the ‘rolling out’ of such urban ecological policies in the form of flagship eco-city prestige projects are not neutral transfers of technical knowledge but are inherently a social–spatial process inflected with criss-crossing power politics and networks. As Ward alluded, departing from the politicalscience oriented notion of ‘policy transfer’, the critical study on policy mobility or policy tourism sought to uncover how – through what practices, where, when and by whom – urban policies are transferred and reproduced from place to place, and are negotiated politically in various territories. (2011, 73) Specifically, the paper will address how green urban policies manifested in China’s eco-city projects are symptomatic of such market-driven ‘fast policy transfer’ (Peck and Theodore 2010) that circulates in and around the world as quick fix ‘green urban solutions’, but are also territorially grounded and subject to changes, contradictions and political struggles as they circulate and ‘touch down’ in specific locales. Based on fieldwork conducted in Tianjin Eco-city between 2011 and 2012, this paper draws on interviews with planners and residents of the eco-city and also observations made at planning workshops and seminars where planners share their views on planning experiences and knowledge transfer in the Tianjin eco city. On 18 May 2012, we also attended a public exhibition on ‘Urban transformations: overseas planning and urban design works done by Singapore consultancy firms’ organised by the URA and the Singapore Institute of Planners. The exhibition held at the URA Centre showcases the overseas planning projects of Singapore firms including Surbana Modelling green urbanism in China International Consultants who are the lead masterplanners of the Tianjin Eco city projects. In addition, secondary data sources such as guidebooks and brochures on eco-cities were also collated and analysed. In the ensuing discussion, the paper critically considers how the ecological imagineering of a key eco-flagship project – the Sino-Singapore Tianjin eco-city – draws selectively on the philosophical and ideological framing of eco-urban ideals. We conclude by interrogating the contradictions inherent in some of the normative ideals of the eco-city within the socio-political context of China. Insofar as the Tianjin eco-city represents and embodies transnational utopian visions of ecologically sustainable urban futures, we argue that it contains within it the very social-ecological contradictions and tensions that it purportedly intends to resolve. Ecological cities and China’s ‘environmental turn’ The extent and depth of China’s environmental problems were key challenges that the Chinese leadership recognised and vowed to address as early as the late 1990s. More recently, Muldavin (2013, 260) writes of the crisis narratives on China’s environment, which illustrate the increasing urgency and dismay that citizens and policymakers (both within and beyond China) view the socio-environmental problems caused by, among other things, over-population and air pollution in the country. In what can be described as an environmental turn in China that has moderated the growth at all costs model in the early years of opening up, Francesch-Huidobro et al. illustrate how, since 2000, the national government has shown a stronger commitment to improving environmental conditions in China by enacting many new environmental laws, increasing investment in green technologies, enhancing the official status of environmental protection agencies throughout its administrative system and including environmental protection as a key criterion in the annual performance evaluation of local leaders. (2012, 2496; see also Cook and Murray 2002) Yeh (2009) however cautions an overly triumphant reading of the greening of China, rooted in a particularistic interpretation of ecological modernisation that assumes outcomes will necessarily benefit the economy, the environment and society (see also Caprotti 2014). In this context, where policymakers in China are cognisant of the intensifying social-environmental problems and coupled with their underlying faith in the use of technology, it is unsurprising that the eco-city (生态城) model or other policy buzzwords such as ‘low carbon city’ (低碳城) are seen as comprehensive solutions for China’s myriad environmental problems (Wu, 2012). 3 Underpinning the eco-flagship projects sprouting up all over China (see Table 1), a few commonalities run through many of them. First, these projects often involve mobilising an internationalised network of policy experts, professional planners, architects, engineers, etc. who engage in technical ‘knowledge transfers’ (see Rapoport 2014). In addition, these projects are also driven strongly by entrepreneurial/commercial objectives and ideals of ecological modernisation. The latter is increasingly seen as a catalyst to even greater growth, especially when focusing on creating new environmental technologies (for example, green buildings and clean energy). According to a recent report published by the China Society for Urban Studies, there are well over 200 ‘eco-city’ projects in China with more than 80 per cent of prefecture-level cities having at least one eco-city project (http://www .chinasus.org/chinasus/). Within the relational framework of policy mobility analysis (McCann and Ward 2011), many of these ecocity flagship projects in China claim to ‘hook up’ to international ‘best practices’ of ‘ecologically advanced’ cities elsewhere and are assembled through a transnational network of ‘idea brokers’ and ‘transfer agents’ that hails from Europe, the USA and Asia. As Hoffman (2011, 55) points out in the case of Dalian, Chinese municipal officials often referenced other cities such as Singapore and Kitakyushu in Japan for ideas on developing a ‘garden city’ and ‘environmentally friendly city’. As noted earlier, the idea of modelling has deep historical roots in the Chinese context and indeed, the Chinese language has many words for ‘model’ and its attendant meaning of replicability. During the course of our fieldwork, we have often encountered Chinese officials using terms such as mofan (exemplar), dianxing (typical), bangyang (model), biaozhun (standard) to describe their urban environmental projects. For the Tianjin eco-city project, it is significant that the development has been designated a shifan project, literally a successful demonstration project that is set to be replicated throughout other parts of China. As a local official emphatically stated to us: the significance of the Tianjin eco city goes beyond just the Binghai area . . . the ultimate goal is for such sustainable urban models to be replicated to all parts of China, to build on the success of what we have here in Tianjin and elevate China’s urban environmental management nationally. It is interesting to note that the modelling of ‘successful’ urban visions of green living and future models of ‘sustainable’ urban development are not always bound up in the usual dichotomy between ‘Western’ versus ‘nonWestern’ urban worlds or even intra-Asia dynamics (see for example, Roy and Ong 2011), but (re)produced Area 2014 doi: 10.1111/area.12128 © 2014 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 4 Table 1 Modelling green urbanism in China Some high-profile eco-city projects in China Eco city project/ location Year project started/size and estimated cost Dongtan eco-city, Shanghai Sino-China Tianjin eco-city Projected population Local agencies and foreign ‘transfer agents’ 1998 84.64 km2 Registered capital: RMB 2.8 billion 650,000 residents 2007 30 km2 Registered capital: RMB 4 billion 350,000 residents by 2020 Project halted Shanghai Industrial Investment awaiting review; Cooperation (上实集团); planning news of the undertaken by Shanghai Urban project being Planning and Design Research Institute revived but scaled and Arup global consultancy firm from down and the United Kingdom; speared headed undertaken by by Peter Head (Arup project director); local agencies named by Time Magazine as one of (e.g. East China the top 30 global ‘eco-heroes’ in Normal 2008; closely associated with deposed University) mayor and former Shanghai Communist party-chief Chen Liangyu In progress (phase Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city II, 2011–2015) Development Co., Ltd; joint venture between Tianjin TEDA Investment Holding Co., Ltd and Singapore Keppel Corporation. Involvement of key political figures in Singapore (Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong) and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao In the phase of Sino-Singapore Nanjing Eco High-tech regulatory Island Development Co., Ltd; joint detailed planning venture between Singapore Intelligent Eco Island Development Pte Ltd and Nanjing Jiangdao Investment & Development Co., Ltd Singapore-Nanjing 2009 15.21 km2 Jiangxinzhou, Registered capital: eco-high-tech US$99 million island (expected total investment: RMB 90 billion) Kunming 2008 eco-city By 2015, the total investment on 67 key construction projects in Kunming will amount to RMB 54 billion 2005 Huangbaiyu eco 3000 acres (including village, 400 houses with Liaoning each one occupying 103.5 m2); Total investment RMB 30 million in 2008 (most investment from the Chinese government and corporations) 2008 Caofeidian 150 km2 eco-city, Expected total Tangshan investment by 2009: RMB 20.67 billion 100,000 residents by 2020 Current status In progress; key The population Kunming Municipal government, ‘breakthrough’ Kunming Research Academy of of urban phase completed Environmental Sciences & Nankai dwellers is (2008–2010) University; Swiss support, in particular projected to Zürich and Kunming had initiated a reach over 5 twinning partnership programme million by 2020 Only 42 out of 1400 residents China-US Center for Sustainable planned 400 Development; the board comprised houses have been members from the Chinese and the US built; since 2008, government as well as companies and the project has NGOs (mainly from the US side). Two been suspended key figures associated with the project are Deng Nan (Deng Xiao Ping’s daughter) and William McDonough (renowned American architect and ‘green guru’ who specialises in green architecture and sustainable urban design) 1,000,000 Tangshan Municipal government; Beijing In the phase of constructing residents Tsinghua Urban Planning & Design infrastructure and Institute; SWECO (Sweden) other public facilities Area 2014 doi: 10.1111/area.12128 © 2014 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Modelling green urbanism in China domestically by the local state in China. While we do not want to overstate such ‘localist’ forms of policymaking, what is being highlighted here is the salient role of local government in generating models and striving to meet national policy targets. In these terms, the paper will now examine how green entrepreneurial urbanism and the selective incorporation of ecological goals are being mobilised and assembled in the flagship eco-city project in Tianjin. Assembling eco-cities in China: the ‘Singapore transfer’ As a joint venture between Singapore’s Keppel Group and a Chinese consortium led by Tianjin TEDA Investment Holding, the 34.2 square kilometre Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city (SSTE) is the result of a collaborative agreement between the governments of China and Singapore to jointly develop a ‘socially harmonious’, environmentally friendly and resource-conserving city in China (Figures 1 and 2). First mooted in 2007 by Singapore’s former Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong as a showcase of Singapore’s strengths in housing, environmental services and water technology, the SSTE is ostensibly an economic venture that aims to build a prototype city that can be ‘replicated in other cities in China’ (Keppel Corporation 2014). Specific features of the eco-city are mostly the products of advanced environmental technologies, including the provision of good thermal insulation for buildings and use of solar energy to reduce energy consumption, rain water collection for irrigation and extensive landscaping features such as sky gardens (The Straits Times 21 July 2009). Seen in this light, the SSTE exemplifies the transnational entrepreneurial ‘greening project’ of the Singapore devel- Figure 1 Entrance to the SSTE flagship project (Source: C.P. Pow) 5 opmental state as it forges global policy connections with Chinese cities. Evidence of such eco-technological ambition of the Singaporean state is extensive, but we will highlight here one of the most significant steps it has undertaken in recent years. Singapore’s efforts to develop and export environmental technologies culminated in the establishment of what Peck calls policy ‘transfer agents’ in the form of the Centre for Liveable Cities in 2009. The Centre’s main goal is to ‘distil Singapore’s expertise in urban management’, drawing from ‘Singapore’s experiences over the last half-century, while creating knowledge to address emerging challenges’ (Centre for Liveable Cities 2012). In this regard, two socio-environmental technologies which are tied intimately with a particular discourse of sustainable development and aggressively exported by Singapore are water desalination and ecocities. Indeed it is precisely Singapore’s ‘wealth of experience in water conservation’ that prompted China to pick it as a partner to build an eco-city in Tianjin (The Straits Times 25 August 2009). In terms of masterplanning and design, the SSTE was jointly developed by the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, the Tianjin Institute of Urban Planning and Design and the Singapore planning firm Surbana International Consultants. Like many of the ‘global intelligence corps’ firms (Olds 2001) that operate around the world, Surbana’s global operation in masterplanning and design work is ‘driven by an economic imperative either to grow or simply to maintain turnover levels in response to shrinking local market (Rapoport 2014, 3). In the case of Surbana (the corporatised arm of the Housing Development Board that was subsequently acquired by the state-owned Temasek Holdings), the company is also charged with the mission of selling the ‘Singapore model’ Figure 2 Scaled model of the SSTE project that promises a ‘socially harmonious’ and ‘environmentally friendly’ development (Source: C.P. Pow) Area 2014 doi: 10.1111/area.12128 © 2014 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 6 Modelling green urbanism in China of successful ‘green’ urban development to the world (see also Pow 2014). It is important to note that the involvement of Singapore goes beyond the participation of private and/or government-linked companies to include many lead public agencies. Notably, Singapore’s Ministry of National Development maintains an ‘Eco-city Project Office’ (with about 10 employees) to drive the Tianjin project and shape its outcome. Significantly, one of the main guiding principles in the SSTE was to adopt a holistic approach towards creating and designing a liveable, efficient and compact city, which would be developed in an ecologically sound and environmentally sustainable manner. The final master plan is said to promote the ‘three harmonies’ (三合) – man living in harmony with man, now and for future generations; man living in harmony with economic activities; and man living in harmony with the environment. Such eco-philosophical thought aligns with the Singapore garden city model with its attendant beautification of urban landscape, underpinned by a strong dose of social engineering. The crux of such thinking is to create socioenvironmental landscapes that are concomitantly economically productive (Savage 1992). To that end, the erstwhile prioritising of green spaces in SSTE as part of the garden city model does not preclude the embodiment of a ‘a vigorous developmentalist orientation’. To keep track of the development of the eco-city, a set of 26 key performance indicators (KPIs) is formulated drawing on national standards in China and also with reference to Singapore as well as internationally defined yardsticks. These 26 KPIs were divided by four groups: 1 2 3 4 good natural environment healthy balance in the man-made environment good lifestyle habits developing a dynamic and efficient economy. In our interviews with planners and officials involved in the SSTE, it is interesting to note that such KPIs have often been highlighted as ‘major milestones’ achieved in the implementation of the project. For the local Chinese officials in the SSTE, striving to meet such internationally defined environmental (and economic) policy targets is clearly an important means of benchmarking the Tianjin eco-city to an external model to the extent that such urban inter-referencing has almost become an ‘embodiment of the implementation of urban sustainable development’ itself (Hoffman 2011, 57). Another distinctive feature of SSTE is that it is not meant to be just another green city but one that is set to fundamentally transform how cities in China will be built in the future. Unsurprisingly, such a rhetoric can be found in other eco-cities like Dongtan in Shanghai, which has Area 2014 doi: 10.1111/area.12128 © 2014 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) since been significantly downsized (Pow and Neo 2013). Indeed, Mr Ho Tong Yen, CEO of the Tianjin Eco-City project, in expressing his interest in utilising the eco-city project as a policy learning tool, remarks: I think that in time to come, this will be a model that many people will study, some cities will replicate certain aspects of the concept we have developed here. They may not replicate eco-city in its whole but I think as long as some ideas are replicated elsewhere, then I think we would have made a very big contribution to sustainable development. In a seminar on eco-city planning that we attended, planners from Surbana and URA spoke about the excitement of ‘building a city from scratch’, literally from ‘a clean slate’. A planner further remarked that with the high-level support from the government from both sides, the SSTE projects allows them to be ‘innovative and experimental . . . something that cannot be done in Singapore where land is scarce with most land being already developed’. Another planner we interviewed shared that except for some existing villages, the area we are given is essentially an empty plot of land to experiment with . . . this is not a luxury planners have in Singapore. We are able to be bold and creative by coming up with innovative design ideas such as the integrated eco-cells and eco spines . . . this enables us be differentiated from other eco-city models out there. Importantly, as the interviews revealed, the modelling of green urbanism is driven as much by place marketing and entrepreneurial logic for global capital accumulation. Notwithstanding that, many of the planners we interviewed also highlighted the urgency to take control of and address the declining quality of the urban environment in China. For them, the eco-city is seen as an attempt to provide a set of planning solutions to manage and control the ‘runaway problem of urbanization in China’. As one planner justified: just take a look at Chinese cities with all the choking smog and pollution . . . we are not just building another ordinary city, the SSTE is designed to be a totally different way of living that balances the environment and urbanization in China. However, the development of high-profile flagship projects is not without problems and brings into question whether the pursuit of urban sustainability and the ecocity is simply a legitimisation strategy for pro-growth entrepreneurial cities. More critically, to what extent is urban sustainability being mainstreamed or normalised as part of neoliberal urbanism? Modelling green urbanism in China Contesting sustainabilities and diverging plans Insofar as all environmental-ecological arguments are arguments about society and, therefore, complex refractions of all sorts of struggles being waged on other realms (Harvey 1996, 372), eco-cities in China both reflect and manifest the multiple contradictory tensions inherent in contemporary Chinese society. The questions remain whether the pursuit of urban sustainability and flagship eco-city projects are simply local forms of legitimisation strategy for cities and urban government that are otherwise engaged in the pursuit of economic growth/boosterism; and to what extent is urban sustainability being ‘domesticated’ and normalised as part of neoliberal urbanism (While et al. 2004; Krueger and Gibbs 2007)? As evinced from the SSTE, despite the support from both the central government in China and Singapore, the project is reportedly beleaguered by delays. Teething problems persist in the translation of Singapore’s ‘garden city’ model onto what is essentially a silted marshland in the Binhai development site. The Straits Times, the leading daily broadsheet in Singapore, highlighted in a critical report that ‘it may not all be smooth sailing’ for the project with Singapore. Among other problems, Chinese officials are reportedly not seeing ‘eye to eye on such things as work priorities and timing’. Indeed, a source of tension was that local Chinese officials are ‘no longer willing disciples of the foreign experts’. This is an unsurprising development given that many of the Chinese officials have been trained overseas, including in Singapore (Ng 2009). A Singapore planner we interviewed noted that: [The] Chinese planners are not ignorant; in fact they are catching up very fast. They are very quick to take what you offer and replicate [it] elsewhere in other parts of China. But for us, we try to have a ‘win-win’ mentality because when they take these ideas elsewhere, they are also helping to spread the Singapore brand name. However, in the same report, Chinese planners and officials in Tianjin (who do not necessarily follow directives from the Central government) are said to prefer eyecatching grandiose projects such as larger scale housing estates and industrial parks rather than Singapore-stylepublic housing that caters to low-income Chinese. One anonymous Tianjin official was quoted as saying that: By the time the public housing project is completed, many of us Tianjin officials would likely be promoted elsewhere. Who would still be around to ensure that it is really the poor people who are relocated to this public housing estate. (Ng 2009) Evidently, insofar as the urban sustainability fix in China is being assembled and mobilised through fast-track green 7 urban policies, they can also be disassembled and unravelled by the contradictory global–local forces that constitute them. As McCann and Ward (2011, xv) suggested, these contradictions point precisely to the tension between mobile urban policies as being relational, global and dynamic on the one hand, and locally fixed and territorial on the other hand, hence underscoring the contested ecological place-making and its spatial imagineering in contemporary urban China. Yet to what extent do residents in SSTE readily subscribe to the green lifestyle that the planners had envisioned? As Hoffman (2011, 67) observed, urban modelling practices are not only about assembling technical expertise and policy transfer, but also entail fostering particular kinds of citizen-subject and instilling certain civic values, be it about being socially responsible, entrepreneurial or sustainable. Regardless of the motivations of both the Chinese authorities and Singaporean agencies in building the eco-city, residents we spoke to were relatively measured in their response. While most people we spoke to welcome the supposed ‘eco features’ in their homes, most are more concerned with affordability of the housing, the appreciation of their property and having adequate facilities in and around the eco-city. A female respondent puts it best when asked about the attractiveness of the eco-city: I will definitely consider this place (the Tianjin eco-city) if the prices are reasonable. Of course, having green housing is good but if it is too expensive it will be difficult for us. Also, right now, the place looks like it is not completely finished yet. People need markets, schools and other shopping facilities. These are all inadequate right now. But I believe once these amenities are ready, the housing prices will rise also. Interestingly, several respondents have also purchased the houses in SSTE as a second home for investment purposes. Indeed, it is not an unusual practice for the Chinese upper-middle class to own several properties. As one resident shared with us: You don’t see many people here every day, even though we are told that the housing development has been sold out! It is very obvious at night when you see many of the unlit homes. Most of the buyers use this as a second holiday home or as a form of property speculation. You can’t really prevent that . . . It’s everywhere in China. Arguably, eco-cities such as SSTE may risk becoming another real-estate speculation project. As Chien argues, rather than truly sustainable communities, eco-city projects in China are better understood as entrepreneurial projects carried out according to ‘flexible local discretion in line with central policies and novel narratives of land commodification under the green economy’ (2013, 176). More critically, for Asian developmental states Area 2014 doi: 10.1111/area.12128 © 2014 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 8 Modelling green urbanism in China engaging in policy learning and knowledge transfer, the environment is yet another field to be tamed, managed and mobilised to sustain capital accumulation while complex social-environmental contradictions are being suppressed and incorporated into the built environment through the very act of building such ‘eco-cities’. More pointedly, as Hoffman (2011, 64) notes, in this new regime of green urbanism in Asia, techniques of green city-building are reflective of national economic agendas and local entrepreneurial goals as well as more benign concerns for ecological and environmental wellbeing of the city. In the final analysis, the SSTE project profiled in this paper raises the larger question of what exactly is an (Asian) eco-city and how does it speak to broader debates on policy mobility and green urbanism. To be sure, many of the social-economic and environmental contradictions that we have highlighted earlier in the paper are not unique to Asian cities and have in fact plagued almost all modern industrialising cities around the world. However, these contradictions and tensions are arguably magnified and accentuated in eco-cities such as SSTE due to the underlying imperative of the developmental states (in this case Singapore and Tianjin/ China) who derive their political legitimacy from sustained economic growth and the continual exploitation of the environment while ‘balancing’ economicenvironmental growth. In other words, solving the urban ‘sustainability fix’ through ecological modernisation is arguably more pronounced and fraught with socialenvironmental contradictions in Asia’s rapidly globalising cities. To this extent, what the SSTE ultimately signifies is the ecological imagineering of green urbanism and policy networks forged between entrepreneurial urban regimes (and transnational capital) eager to reinvent themselves with a purported eco-city model that is ‘future proof’ against looming environmental crisis. 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