Written by: Lin Ye
Posted on: December 19, 2018 | 
| 中文
Chinese Cities Call for Forests
The relationship between urbanization and environment has become a global topic as more and more countries have shown their concerns about how to cope with the contradiction between city greening and gray infrastructure. This year, two cities of China, Beijing and Fuzhou, with their fine performances in city forest development, have been recognized by UNFAO as green city models for promotion.
City forest refers to the forest eco-system which consists of all vegetation covering the city land, with various trees as the main plants, playing extensive and significant ecological functions. The work of city forest construction in China has been carried out step by step, starting from urban areas, suburbs and outskirts of cities, forest parks built up inside city proper and woods planted in the outer areas.
Presently, the construction of city forests has been promoted throughout the country with patches of wastelands re-greening, and parks and gardens built along the rivers and streams. Guided by the fundamental theories and methods of forest ecology, and based on the mature experiences drawn from reforestation and landscape ecology, cities are making their utmost efforts to build their city forest eco-systems close to the natural forest eco-system in the cement jungles, so as to offer more and more green spaces for the people. When natural and green spaces are accessible within a hundred meters reach of the communities, the citizens’ green conception and satisfaction of their living environment will be greatly improved.
Woods and waters are combined together in China’s city ecological construction through the ways of planting trees by waters and managing waters through trees, to link the two major sub-ecosystems together to form a larger and integrated ecological system. Starting from a greater vision of merging green lands and cities as a whole will help not only protect the existing woods in suburbs, but also to improve the broken and damaged city ecology, and connect them with the ecological corridors linking the suburbs and the city proper.
Translated by Wu Jinying
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