Bonanza of construction projects to renew and modernize Qingdao

Downtown land to be redeveloped and ancient buildings restored

Qingdao of East China's Shandong province is upgrading its construction, with a total of 974 projects set to be completed this year, according to officials.

Early this year, the Qingdao government issued a three-year action plan to renew the city through upgrades and construction across eight sectors. These are historical places; inefficient land; old towns and villages; administrative facilities; transport infrastructure; railway routes; parking lots; and a park city.

Over the next three years, the work of renewal and protection of the city's historical areas will promote the conservation and utilization of historical buildings and traditional structures, improve city function, enhance historical city blocks and their attractions, and will build streets and 5A scenic areas featuring a combination of historical culture and modern elements, said Chen Weihua, deputy director of the Qingdao historical area preservation and renewal headquarters office.

With a top priority in the action plan, Qingdao will conduct preservation and upgrading work of the historical and port areas.

The work on historical areas will center on Zhongshan Road, its nearby area, and another four districts, which span a total area of 1.71 square kilometers. The construction work will add new business patterns and experiences, aiming to restore historical places that combine trade activities and a qualified dwelling environment.

For the port areas, the local authority said it will launch 14 projects. These projects are involved in the four industries of cruise tourism, financial trade, intelligent innovation and commercial culture. Together they will build the port areas into a base for an international shipping trade and finance innovation center.

As the city develops, limited land resources and increasing demand for expansion will require Qingdao to better use space to alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand.

According to the action plan, the city will explore new methods of collectively using land resources to further optimize its industrial layout, improve city function and quality to introduce new industries and inject vitality into its development.

In the next three years, Qingdao will focus on the downtown area to develop and construct 10 major areas, aiming to set an example in the redevelopment of inefficient land.

The 10 major areas will adopt the philosophies of ecological protection, transit-oriented development and 15-minute community life circle into their construction. They each have mapped out development plans, taking into account infrastructure improvement, industrial layout and a timeline for development in different sections.

The 10 areas plan to construct a total of 314 projects over the next three years, with 228 expected to be completed this year.

In addition, work to restore old towns and villages is in progress. This year, Qingdao announced it is to start restoring 318 old communities across the city. So far, up to 93 percent of this work is under construction. It is expected to be entirely under construction by the end of June, according to the Qingdao urban renewal and construction headquarters office.

The restoration work will allow Qingdao's old communities to be updated into a "3.0 version", according to local officials.

The city government called for problems in city development incorporating transport services, green development, the supply of gas and heat, environmental protection and water facility construction. To this end, local authorities said they will promote the construction of roads in downtown areas and pedestrian overpasses. The city will also use clean energy for heating and implement the goals of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.

Focusing on infrastructure construction, Qingdao will build 21 transportation projects between 2022-24. Of them, nine are on public roads, four concern railways, five refer to ports, two are transportation hubs and one is a tunnel. Their routes will extend to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province in North China, to the Yangtze River Delta in the south, the Yellow River in the west and to Japan and South Korea from its east.

This project is designed to establish a comprehensive transportation network step-by-step as part of the city's effort to accelerate its construction as an international transport hub, local officials said.

Between 2022-24, Qingdao will develop 34 projects to build a safe, convenient, efficient and green urban railway transit system. According to the action plan, 11 projects are for subway construction, 21 for transit-oriented development and two for city roads.

By the end of 2024, the city will put three new railway routes into operation and by 2025 open nine, according to Zhang Jun, general manager of Qingdao Railway Group.

This year, Qingdao is organizing to build 64 public parking lots, with 46 invested in by social capital. It has planned to build 31,000 berths with an investment worth 6.56 billion yuan ($976.3 million), accounting for 72 percent of the total investment of the 64 projects.

Apart from infrastructure, the action plan highlights the construction of a park city in the next three years. A park city refers to an urban environment complemented by parks and greenways, said Geng Yilong, deputy head of the Qingdao landscape and forestry bureau.

Over the next three years, Qingdao will build a city greenway network, 200 park greenways, 100 green passages, 300 plantation areas and one ecology green project, according to Geng.