Project Highlights | Urban Design Implementation for the Core Area of Hangzhou Linping Digital Smart City

Introduction: How can we cultivate a digital smart city amid fields and rivers, creating an urban environment driven by digital intelligence?

Opportunities?and?Challenges

Linping originated in the vast green fields at the confluence of the Qiantang River and the Grand Canal. Qiaosi Port connects directly to the Shangtang River and the Qiantang River, once serving as a crucial waterway for travel eastward from Hangzhou and its primary port. In the 1980s, large-scale reclamation transformed the expansive mudflats into fertile land along the Qiantang River. Today, Qiaosi Farm remains an oasis of greenery, a pastoral heart within the urban landscape of Hangzhou.

Up to now, the city has become the background of the new area, but surrounded by hills, fields, and rivers, a series of blue and green resources are still the most unique value of Linping Digital Smart City.

Today, Linping Digital Smart City occupies Hangzhou’s gateway to the Yangtze River Delta and is adjacent to Hangzhou’s financial and business center. The three central axes including Qiaosi Port not only radiate transportation to the entire metropolitan area, but also link a series of surrounding cities and nature. Resources, manufacturing hinterland (East Xiasha/East Linping), e-commerce hub; the value of location resources is an important prerequisite for the Digital Smart City to become a new hub for technology and manufacturing. (Swipe left to view the three pictures below)

Of course, the layout of these resources is still challenging - the three rail transit stations are located in the corners, and the regional transportation corridor is in the center, close to the rail station land, resulting in serious spatial fragmentation.

In fact, Linping's biggest challenge lies in the lack of innovation elements such as universities/scientific research enterprises, leading enterprises, and industrial digital talents. This is also a challenge faced by Hangzhou and even China's new generation of cities.

So in this case, the task we face is: How to cultivate a city among fields and rivers? And a city aiming for digital intelligence?

The World Telecommunication Union released the report "Digital Smart City: An Analysis of Definitions", which summarized the main characteristics of more than 100 definitions of smart sustainable cities: the cornerstone system of government-led construction (digital smart governance, digital sustainable city). Intelligent environment, digital transportation) are of course important, but combined with the embedded innovation nervous system (digital economy, digital community, digital life) co-constructed with society, the two systems can actively interact with each other to help create and cultivate future innovative people. innovative experimental field and home.

Embedded Innovation Model

With the iteration of digital technology, in the Web3.0 technology support system driven by AI technology, the embedded innovation model has become the mainstream of the innovation space. A series of international innovation block cases show that the clear and organic collage between diverse community scenes creates a strongly embedded innovation space.

Looking back at the thousand-year story of silkworm production in Hangzhou, we planned the Spring Silkworm Project:

Between the digital and smart corridors that link regional resources, digital, energy, and transportation are used to build an intricate artificial neural network, forming the cornerstone system of the digital smart city as a whole and implanting a series of embedded innovation incubation spaces.

The space carrier of the Spring Silkworm Project will focus on cultivating the mutual embedding of four community-related functions: Pro-consumer makers, industry, scientific research and education, and youth families:

——Use regional corridors as a carrier to cultivate the main innovation community;

——Relying on the "nest" of the TOD site to promote the gathering of diverse groups of people and innovative collage;

Reversely use active interactive innovation to unleash the power of digital intelligence innovation, continuously accumulate and anchor the community.

We propose ideas for digital smart cities from three levels:

Level 1: Growth Skeleton

The three regional corridors link the region's diversified industries, transportation, ecology, and innovation resources, cultivating a diverse group of innovative people in Linping, and linking the scientific and technological green fields along the water horizontally to jointly build an innovation framework.

Digital Intelligence Spine

——Cultivation of industrial communities

The Shanghai-Hangzhou Expressway links Shanghai and Hangzhou, and we chose it as the backbone of the science and technology innovation industry.

Integrate the smart logistics center and use the supply chain corridor to form direct support for the industry, and both sides have become the most important cultivation space for the industrial community. Each 50m protective green space prioritizes services for logistics and supply chains - parking under the trees, shared logistics micro-warehouses, and reserved underground logistics space.

In the central location, we recommend setting up Hangzhou Future Academy, linking industry associations and application research institutes to provide enterprises with full-chain and full-lifecycle support. The protective green space on both sides has been transformed into a green sports field, where the young industrial community can relax and enjoy the green space.

Digital Intelligence Canal

-Cultivation of a digital maker community The urban charm that a canal can bring is enormous

Whether in Hangzhou’s historical perspective or today’s international innovation district, the canal has always been a space of encounter and triggering.

Between East Lake and Qiantang River, Qiaosi Port serves as the urban life center of this project, connecting the new city with the existing urban area on the east side, the existing Yishang Town in the north and the Qiantang River in the south, reshaping the new city and the region , the close relationship between the waterfront and the city.

The new Binhe Shared Transportation Line takes you to experience the smart and convenient future travel mode; the most fashionable leisure scenes and the most cutting-edge technological experiences take place here at the same time, creating a Livinglab digital intelligence experimental field that combines data and reality, and the future of the youth of the maker community. A waterfront happy gathering place.

Digital Intelligence Farm

——Cultivation of youth family community

The west side is the interface between the new city and the fields, where we will serve as a space for the growth of new young families in Hangzhou.

We are more active in dealing with the boundary between the two. There are no roads under the protective greenery of highways and high-speed rails, which have become new spatial resources. The 2km Field Expo Park allows Linping’s young family community to experience the countryside without having to stay away from the city. After get off work, you can ride with your family along the dedicated bicycle line, shuttling between forests and sports venues; or climb up to the observation tower in the barnyard and gaze at the distant mountains and rivers at the end of the field.

Digital Intelligence Forest

——Cultivation of scientific research and education community

In large green corridors, pocket forests and wetlands introduce natural habitats into the city and provide resilience to the city. Science and technology institutes and education centers are scattered throughout, creating a high-quality space for the scientific research community to nurture innovative inspiration.

Level 2: Neural Network

The interaction and integration of the four communities create diverse neighborhood possibilities.

The future smart infrastructure system built along the urban skeleton weaves an artificial neural network; the fine neural network supports six innovative neighborhood units, providing full-cycle space supply for enterprises.

• Retain part of the existing urban fabric and extend and connect surrounding roads to form a 50*150 block scale, which will serve as the basic urban network of the future community.
• Open up the blue-green network and create dynamic green corridors within the community, leading people to urban public green and waterfront spaces.
• The main dynamic interface of the city has shifted from the city's main road to the waterfront. The super factory on the roadside + the maker club by the river form an integrated functional layout where industry and life are intertwined and embedded.
• Four scale incubators, XL, L, M and S, provide diverse and flexible space options for innovative people.

We simulated the neighborhood growth process from 0 to 20 years. The spatial model of the neighborhood will create an open and integrated ecological environment for the entire life cycle growth of enterprises. Flexible land use and flexible development models provide greater potential space for urban development.

Level 3: Mathematical Academy

The three rail stations will become the city's smart hub, the "nest" of the Spring Silkworm Project, and collaborate with diverse communities to form three innovative campuses, shape multi-dimensional digital smart life application scenarios, accumulate and anchor innovative people, and provide innovation source power for the city.

Linping Landscape Campus｜Art Vision, Digital Intelligence Portal

• Efficiently utilize the space in front of the station, and fully connect the north-south multi-dimensional high-speed connections.
• The side peaks of Hengling Ridge and the multi-layered urban interface form a gateway symbol unique to Hangzhou’s landscape.
• After exiting the station through the pedestrian bridge, you can go directly to the hill park or enter the Hyper-Reality Digital Center to experience the latest full-sensory MR competitive game, or cross the highway to the Digital Intelligence Industry Service Center to participate in the upcoming Global Digital Asset Conference.

Yongxuan Wisdom Academy｜Open source wisdom, creative happiness

• The four-image sunken square is connected to the rail station and connects the four-quadrant urban space, forming a round table living room for young innovative talents.
• Together with the waterfront interface on the south side, it creates a unique urban image of Yongxuan Road Station.
• Composite functions are embedded around it to form a high-quality residential home that blends blue and green.

Wengmei EXPO Expo Academy Campus｜Global perception, digital and real integration

• In the future, Wengmei Station will open to the green field and be embedded with multiple open innovation functions such as a computing center, a shared conference center, and a manufacturing workshop, becoming Hangzhou’s future urban science and technology living room and innovation core.
• Yuanshi Science and Technology Museum and EXPO Expo Park will become landmark check-in points for Hangzhou’s new generation of cultural, creative and scientific creative people.
• In the Science and Technology Museum, the Teamlab supernatural space interactive exhibition is ongoing; in the Expo Park, you can enjoy a riverside electronic concert, stroll through the digital fever market under the forest, and experience the never-ending digital waterfront carnival.

Project basic information Project Name: Implementation Urban Design for the Core Area of Linping Digital Smart City, Hangzhou

Project scale: The planning research scope is 10.14 square kilometers, the implementation urban design scope is about 352 hectares, and the conceptual architectural landscape design scope of key plots is 196 hectares.

Awards: Second Prize in the International Urban Design Competition Project time: May 2024-August 2024

Sponsor: Hangzhou Linping New City Development and Construction Management Committee Design unit: ISA Internationales Stadtbauatelier

ISA team

Chief Designer: Seog-Jeong Lee, Zhang Yajin

Architectural design leader: Chen Shenzhou

Ecological landscape manager: Wu Zhetao

Traffic consultant: Shi Kequan

Project Manager: Dong Huijuan

Team members: Chen Ruoxi, Hu Dandan, Wang Haizhou, Li Zhongying, Xue Bowen, Wang Tianyu, Wang Hanxiao, Tian Chuan, Zhang Fan, Zhen Baolong, Chen Ying, Zhong Linhao, Chen Tianliang, Li Zhen, Wang Bin, Xia Wenjing, Xu Shaoyang, Tao Yu, Filippo Meurisse, Niklas Kramer, Frederik Johann, Linda Obermeyer.