A mask-wearing woman walks in the Temple of Heaven during an
extremely smoggy day in Beijing in July. Li Wen / Xinhua
Beijing will issue a new urban planning strategy by the end of this year that
will for the first time contain a plan to preserve large and green "air
corridors".
An urban air corridor is a new field being researched by ecological
departments both at the city and national levels.
Liu Chunlan of the Beijing Research Institute of Environmental Protection
said the corridors will be wide tracts of land along the direction of Beijing's
prevailing winds that could help disperse pollutants and hot air.
Experts said the corridors will likely play a significant role in the
prevention and control of small particulate matter, including PM2.5 -
particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns that can penetrate
the lungs and seriously harm health.
Liu said the use of air corridors will be a key topic in Beijing's new city
planning strategy. She said current research will mainly focus on locating the
city's major air corridors and coming up with ideas for how to preserve
them.
"The type of air corridor that may have the functions we desire - such as
helping disperse pollutants and heat - should be long and wide enough with
plenty of green foliage," Liu said. "We would like to control the density and
height of buildings along the city's major air corridors."
But she admitted that it will be tough work because the city has more than
six ring roads and not much space remaining in the downtown area.
Experts, however, have shifted their attention to Beijing's suburbs to help
solve the problem of dispersing pollutants out of Beijing's urban areas.
According to the Economic Research Institute at the Beijing Academy of Social
Sciences in late July, a severely polluted route from Nankou to Machikou along
the Beijing-Tibet Highway in northwest Beijing's Changping district lies in a
major wind pattern that blows into the capital's downtown area. Under poor
weather conditions, this route aggravates the smog in the city center.
The institute's report said that in an area of about 10 square kilometers
along the route, there are many heavy-polluting industries. The city government
should clear the area of all of industrial facilities, the report suggested.
Peng Yingdeng, a researcher from the Beijing Research Institute of
Environmental Protection, said the suggestion has gained traction among experts.
Peng added that pollution control in northwest Beijing would at least help
disperse pollutants in the Changping and Haidian districts.
But they may not be able to help the rest of the city.
"For most parts of the downtown area, counting on air corridors in the
suburbs to reduce pollution levels may not be realistic," said Zhang Zengjie,
another researcher from the Beijing Research Institute of Environmental
Protection.
Reducing emissions intensity may be the best solution for the densely
populated downtown area because it would be hard to demolish buildings to make
way for an air corridor, he said.