“Digital River and Sea：” Fengxian New City Becomes a Model of Future Industrial Communities Featuring Coordinated Industrial and Urban Development

2022.05.18

The outline of an unprecedented "digital city" has begun to take shape in Fengxian New City.

The recently released 14th Five-Year Plan and Construction Action Plan of Fengxian New City specifies the construction and development blueprint of Fengxian New City during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. Based on the positioning of "the western gateway of Lin-gang Special Area, the center of southern Shanghai, and a dynamic new city in the Yangtze River Delta," Fengxian will build itself into a comprehensive node city with distinctive industrial features and unique ecological endowments on the development corridor around Hangzhou Bay, and form the basic framework of "four cities and one capital," namely, innovation city, garden city, digital city, consumer city, and capital of cultural and creative industries.

It is worth noting that Fengxian will focus on digital industrialization and industrial digitization to develop digital economy and build a digital society and digital government. The leaders of Fengxian District said that Fengxian will become part of Shanghai's efforts to build an international digital capital with global influence, build a 3-m2 "digital river and sea" project with an investment of RMB 40 billion, and provide a model of future industrial communities featuring coordinated industrial and urban development, as well as digital-driven, Internet-based and smart growth.

The planning and design concepts of the "digital river and sea" project, namely the integration and symbiosis of "three T-shaped runways (the green T-shaped runway, the industrial T-shaped runway and the urban T-shaped runway)," are quite eye-catching.

Like a green T-shaped runway, the Central Ribbon Park, together with Jinhui Creek Blue Collar Park on its east side and Lianhegang Waterfront Park on its south side, forms three thematic park clusters, namely Sponge City Park, Waterfront Park and City Park. Just like the zero-carbon and carbon-negative buildings such as Paradise in the United Kingdom, floating offices in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and CLT Passivhaus in the United States, the “digital river and sea” project focuses on the future, practices environmental-friendly concepts and integrates green development and carbon neutrality concepts into the entire life cycle of buildings.

Under the spotlight on the green T-shaped runway is surely the industrial axis composed of three major sectors, i.e., the intelligent "chip" industry, the beautiful "chip" world and the healthy "chip" community. However, it's not a fragmented industrial "island," but an urban destination that realizes the digitization of life, work and leisure scenarios, and interacts with industries through the management platform with the digital base as the core. The "digital river and sea" urban renewal project of Fengxian District is simply the result of the synergy of artificial intelligence, 5G communications, precision medicine, autonomous driving and the Internet of Things.

As its name "river and sea" imply, the project aims to, relying on the world's top digital management technologies, attract high energy level technology innovation industries and top talent to gather here. This will drive the development of the entire Fengxian New City and Shanghai and promote the digital transformation of industries and residential communities in the surrounding areas.

If we say that the "digital river and sea" project is the application of intelligent scientific and technological achievements to explore the future of Fengxian New City, the 2.0 version of the new city center will spark a cognition revolution.

A super central activity area (CAZ) featuring transit-oriented development (TOD) has emerged on a 7,000-mu ecological forest.

The super CAZ boasting the TOD mode is centered around Wangyuan Road Station of the south extension of Line 5, and will be connected to intra-city lines including Line 15, Fengxian Line and Nanfeng Line in the future, forming a hub with a development area of more than 4.5 million m2.

If Fengxian New City is regarded as a chessboard, every building and every business form in the new city center is a chess piece that "activates" the originally separated industrial units, science and technology units, residential units, cultural units and the preserved old city units.

It's the emergence of the powerful and inclusive new city center that invigorates the entire Fengxian New City. Nanqiaoyuan Old Town Community, Oriental Beauty Valley Avenue, International Youth Community and SME Science and Technology Innovation Zone of Fengxian New City will become the best "entrances of flow" for the "hub" of the new city center. They will create more industrial opportunities and profit models, demonstrating the attractiveness of the city.