Instant Cities

20 years ago, many a town took 1,000 years of building to evolve into a livable place. Today, in China it takes less than 4 years too build any city, complete with spanking new infrastructure, systems and all. instant cities are everywhere, Dubai, PutraJaya, mainly in the East. Is it really to satisfy and meet population growths, and demands for more labour and resources, or are we merely adding unnecessary strain to our own economy. Five of the world's most polluted cities today are in China. Would building new cities solve the imbalance in the quality of life we find today? Shoddy construction add to the pains of a city, maintenance problems abound, and traffic jams are a daily experience to work. Yes, the cities are there for us, but do we lead a quality life as we do a hundred years ago?

Protecting Our Water Environments

There are many associations and bodies governing the acts protecting our water environment. In Australia, the The Environment Protection Act [1993] sets down policies and objectives through well stated aims and obligations. It is said in order to protect our water environment one has to look into enhancing and allowing suitable development and addressing social obligations and awareness. Communities must be encouraged and supported, in their management of pollution emanating from their businesses and enterprise. Waste water treatment and recycling becomes a policy, and that standards are followed with regards to limits of producing waste water or allowing it to pollute the environment.

China's GDP is Green

Until recently, Chinese had been proud of the explosive economic growth, an averaged 8-plus percentincrease in GDP over the past 25 years, regardless of heavy costs in biological and environmental fields as well as resources.

Now the central leadership is turning to a scientific concept of development which calls for an overall, coordinate and sustainable development.

Premier Wen Jiabao, in his government work report to the current parliament session, pledged to well handle the issues of population, resources and environment and to meet the requirementsof achieving a harmonious development by coordinating human being and the nature.

In related developments, the State Statistical Bureau (SSB) and the State Environmental Protection Administration are jointly working on the criteria for the so-called green GDP, which will include the costs in environmental, biological and resources fields into account when governments of all levels calculate economic development.

Balancing Bio-Systems against Technology

In the new city, a wireless society exists: it sustains itself by interacting and ENGAGING the environment. One process is through returning all by-products of both human and mechanical systems back into the existing immediate present eco-system. Architecture simply consists of bio-climatic and electronic control systems and models that modulate the environment for optimum comfort level and continuous assessment and re-balancing and finite adjustments of these systems to reflect and accommodate exacting human needs.

There are currently interests to use bio-degradable building poroducts some of which come from using hemp, as in the States, or from using re-cycled waste and by-products from Palm Oil Industry, old palm trunks some several millions are available each year for this purpose. The "bio-mesh" has been studied and exhbiit lightweieght characteristics and strneght as a binder in making boards and floor panels. This study is avialble in Malaysia and ZLG Design has access to this work.