Zibo city in East China's Shandong province has been ramping up its efforts to improve its urban and rural environment and transform itself into a park city - in an overall push to create a better quality of life for residents and improve their overall civic pride, social cohesion and sense of happiness and security.
Fenghuang town in the Linzi district, for one, has innovated its work practices in one key area - changing passive refuse disposal to active garbage collection.
Cleaning trucks have been designated to collect garbage at the doors of the villagers twice a day, in the mornings and afternoons. Construction garbage and bulky garbage are collected by appointment.
Zhang Min, deputy mayor of Fenghuang, said that 56 villages were now equipped with a total fleet of more than 60 door-to-door garbage collection trucks. These reportedly realize a seamless connection of garbage from people's homes to the garbage transfer station.
Wang Liming, director of the Municipal Urban Administration Bureau, said that overall, there had been major improvements to the urban and rural landscape in the wake of extensive upgrades to Zibo's environmental management in 2019.
Wang added that the city would continue to encourage and advise its residents to help make the city clean, tidy and beautiful and it would continue to promote market-oriented integrated reforms.
Zibo also proposes to develop itself into a park city, to fully implement the new development concept, improve the quality of life there and highlight the value of the city.
The Mansi River Forest Cycling Park, currently under construction, covers an area of 15 hectares and when up and running will be equipped with a professional cycling ring and a leisure cycling ring. After completion, it will become the first professional smart cycling park in the city.
A rendering of the Xiaofu River Cultural Recreation Ecological Sightseeing Belt in Zibo, East China's Shandong province. [Photo/Zibo Daily]
The Xiaofu River Cultural Recreation Ecological Sightseeing Belt - a major municipal project – will see about 6.5 billion yuan ($1.01 billion) spent on overall environmental restoration and landscape improvements to 64.7 kilometers of riverways.
While speeding up the construction of the project, the city has also initiated drafting of operations plans which will kick into place once work is complete. These will cover support facilities and venues to meet the leisure needs of citizens for camping, dining, shopping and tourism. Plans are for music festivals, cultural festivals and international marathons to be staged to improve the city's appeal even more.
Song Aixiang, a Party member of the municipal Water Conservancy Bureau, said construction of the belt would drive urban renewal, rural revitalization and cultural and tourism integration – adding it would also give full play to the location advantages and cultural and green advantages of the "Mother River".
The city plans to earmark 5-15 years to transform itself into a park city and a pioneer of its kind in China. Wang said that this year would mark a propitious beginning to the endeavor. By the end of July Zibo had already launched 218 projects and completed 56, with a total investment of 6.186 billion yuan.
Moving forwards, the city plans to speed up the release of plans to provide support for the construction, advanced scheduling and streamlining of key projects – including the removal of any bottlenecks.
