介绍:
Xiaohua: Increasing attention is being given to the “livability” of Chinese cities as their environment becomes less polluted. An Asian Development Bank study has ranked 33 Chinese cities in China according to their environmental livability through a pioneering series of indexes. And the most livable city on the Chinese mainland goes to……Chengdu. Does that surprise you?
Heyang: Anyway, not so much, because when you look at the index factors, they include the quality of urban aquatic environments, water resources, air and the management of solid waste and the environment. So I think a lot of it is about the environment that one lives and Chengdu is a place with natural advantages when it comes, you know, it has the water around it, it has quite a nice environment that has preserved for it, and also on top of that I think with the pace of life being quite slow, quite, the kind of you can take your leisure time to slow down and enjoy life, that kind of atmosphere. I would say yes. I’m not really that surprised that Chengdu snatches the crown on this one.
John: Yeah. The thing that we are not looking at economic opportunity, we are not looking at the job market, we are not even necessary looking at the cost of living. All we are looking at is very much environmental factors as Heyang said. So I’m not surprised to find out that Beijing ranked 18th.
Xiaohua: I think it should rank lower.
John: Yeah. It’s only 33 cities. All right? I mean compared to Lanzhou, Taiyuan, it’s a lot more livable. That’s for darn sure. But I’m not surprised that Beijing and Shanghai don’t rank the top ten, because especially Beijing with the air pollution, also with just the amount of sprawl, the urban sprawls, that we see commute time are huge pain in the ass. So really I would not classify Beijing as all that livable. Now looking at Chengdu, I mean I’ve never been there, but if we look at some of its history, it’s supposed to be the place where… Sichuan is the place where the tea culture got started in China. It’s been the capital of Daoism for a long long time. There is a lot of Daoist temples and holy sites around the area. So looking at those influences at least I think it’s easy to see how Chengdu is the most livable.
Xiaohua: So let’s don’t forget the availability of food, which is very important. Good food and snacks.
John: Or spicy food.
Xiaohua: You can get the non spicy ones I suppose in Chengdu as well. So if we look at this report, a lot of it has to do with natural conditions, you know, location as well. What do you think will constitute very livable cities?
Heyang: Well, I think the natural condition is only one part of the whole story. As we know, we are kind of already on a road to distract a lot of the environment advantages that we used to have. So I think the more important discussion is how can we stop this or maintain sustainable growth. And a lot of it has to do with better urban planning, better…. being very strict with following some of very good rules that we already have.
John: Some places are gonna be more naturally inclined to be more livable, which I think is why that Chengdu ranks at the top, because naturally it just has a lot of resources to make life a bit easier. Whereas, the place like Beijing basically in the desert, so it’s kind be a lot more difficult. But again in Beijing, the reason I would not say livable it has a lot to do with city planning. To be honest, the city just was not planned very well. And also it has not done a good job of incorporating any aspects of its natural environment. It’s just basically glass and concrete everywhere. I mean I was thinking the best place to live, the place like Seattle, for example, but again still have a lot of things to do with environment. But also I mean just the layout of the city, I feel, is a bit more organic and a bit more natural.
Xiaohua: Yeah. It’s probably too late for Beijing and some of those existing cities to change, apart from to improve the air quality, I guess, or water resources things like that.
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