CDE110 2018-2019 group 2 Final

Group 2

Group member:   Yiran.Yan 1717941 (Material, Leader)     Feifei.Shao 1717040 (Food & Energy)

                           Yudi.Tan 1717321 (Local enterprise)       Weining. Qi 1718179 (Water)      

                           Hongchen.Li 1718369 (Facilities)            Yilu.Ge 1716337 (Movement)      

                           Jiyang. Sun 1613541 (People)                Yinting. Li 1718528 (Biodiversity)                         

Aim:

Researches will be done by our group in nine specific aspects. According to our researches, we will decide one most important aspect to give improving proposal for Lotus village, part 2 in Xietang district in SIP. Combining the views of local residents, our proposal aims to make the most effective improvement for the community to make the life of residents more convenience and safe.

Background for our site visit:

As one of parts of Cailian Community, Lotus village part 2 includes 271 units and 2168 suites. There are various types of houses in the community, including community office buildings, custom banquet halls, performing arts halls, old-age activity rooms, various supporting rooms and commercial rental houses. In terms of community management system, party committees was set up to manage 18 staff members and set up many organizations such as green community volunteer organizations. This village has been established for more than ten years and has accumulated certain management experience (Cailian Community Office, 2019).

                                                                                   Lotus Village 2 Map 

Survey direction:

Our group survey direction is mainly divided into four sections, namely, society, economy, environment and the interaction among them.

Society: People, Facility and Movement;

Economy: Local enterprises and food;

Environment: Energy, Water, Material and Biodiversity.

      1. Method:

    2.Process:

• Prepare for the first trip (such as researching the related information from the differenet perspectives)
• First trip
• Group discussion ----first trip (observate the outline) & first draft of group page
• Second trip:
  • Interviewed
  • Distinguish different use of roads
• Draw an analysis diagrams, discuss and improve the group page
• Final draft of group page

Method:   

1. Interview  2.Mapping

Interview:

We interviewed 50 residents about their feelings and suggestions of local facilities. Our findings are following:

Problem:

 1.Gaps in provision.

(Figure 1.1 Facilities catchment in neighborhood level, scale 1:20000)

(Figure 1.2 Facilities' location in the community)       

Situation: According to figure 1.1, although there are various facilities surrounding Lotus village, the library ,leisure center, playground and small parks are still needed. However, the hospital service scope could not cover the southeast part of this village. In addition, the public paces are rare (Figure 1.2).

Negative impacts: Lacking Those facilities makes people feel inconvenient, and can not meet people's needs.

Solution: Adding a hospital service center around the community. Enlarging the vegetable market. Building more public entertainment facilities.

2. Informal gates

Situation: The village has designed only two main entrances which are not enough. Therefore, there are several informal gates insert in the fence, which are extremely narrow.

 (Figure 1.3 informal gate)

Negative impacts:  Going through this kind of gates are extremely inconvenient for a normal adult, not to mention the people with disabilities. It is also a safety loophole. Thieves can easily come into the community without interference.

Solution: People made it means they need it, so there should be more small formal gates where these kind of gates located, and guards should be decorated to view the new gates as well.

Advantages:

Although there are many shortcomings in this neighborhood, the merits exist. Firstly, the facilities are clustered in Lotus commercial area, which encourages trip chain. Secondly, as figure 1.4 indicates, the frontage is continuous on one side around the road. It is the better than the same number of outlets discontinuous on both sides (Barton, Grant & Guise, 2003).

(Figure 1.4 the layout of Lotus commercial area)

Method: sampling survey :

Survey of local residents through a sample survey of 100 local residents randomly and then get the final age distribution data of the population. Questionnaires include, but are not limited to, questions such as age and gender.

People: 

Figure 2.1: Distribution of  buildings

Figure 2.2: Distribution of age

Look at this picture depicting the distribution of the residents in this neighborhood in red.

According to Baidu (n.d.), there are about 2100 families, 76000 square meters area in total and 85.7 hundred population density.

In the Lotus 2rd District community, the most of the residents are elders according to the pies.

Elder: The phenomenon of that there are the most population is the elderly. But there are not a lot of public facilities for them.

Middle-age adult: Most of the middle-age adults are migrant residents from other areas because several ago, the rent is very cheap and it is very comfortable to go to supermarkets such as Lian Feng Plaza and also the workers lived in this community are very convenient to go to the market.   

Child: A kindergarten and a primary school are near the center business district of the Lotus District. There is no entertainment facilities for them neither.

Figure 2.3: Rental report column                                                     Figure 2.4: Kindergarten

 Community:

This community is very unfair. The unfairness lies in its policy towards local people and foreigners. There are great differences in housing rent and other aspects between local residents and migrants. For example, because the government decided to ban the landlord from renting the garage on the first floor to outsiders, the landlords had to increase the original rent on the first floor to the tenants living on the second floor and then live in the garage on the first floor by themselves , which led to the dissatisfaction and resentment of the migrant tenants about the rent increase.

Survey:

We interviewed 50 residents with three questions including price, convenience, food quality and food type.  The collected data is following:

I used recording to draw the spatial distribution of food supply (Figure 4.1).

Findings:

Most people are satisfied with the convenience and price of purchasing food but not the quality and kinds of food.

Analysis:

In terms of the convenience and price, the distribution of food supply in the community is relatively reasonable. There are a food supply point in the center, a vegetable market and restaurants in the Lotus Commercial Street. All are the main food supply of the entire community. In addition, there are some mobile food stalls (Figure 4.2) and convenience stores run by residents which can supply food to locals as well as job opportunities. Plus, some land is allocated to residents and generally used to grow vegetables, which not only provides healthy and affordable food, but also is considered as greening (Figure 4.3). All of them could be regarded as methods to optimize the price and convenience of food purchase.

                                                     Figure 4.1: Spatial distribution of food supply.      

Figure 4.2: the mobile food stall                                               Figure 4.3: the land for vegetables

Regarding the quality and kinds of food, I visited the food purchase point in the center including Meijia shop and a meat and vegetable store. In Meijia shop sufficient kinds of snacks are offered. However, there are some ‘Three-no’ snacks (Figure 4.4). In this meat and vegetable store, the sanitary condition is poor (Figure 4.5). In detail, the containers for vegetables and meat are not clean. In addition, the space for customers is narrow as well as the space for food. All above would lead to a bad impression on the quality and kinds of food in this community.

Figure 4.4: ‘Three-no’ snacks                                                   Figure 4.5: Poor sanitation

Method:

Regarding the economic activities in the Lotus Community, we interviewed with both residents and shops about the regularly quantity of local business activities in order to make the analysis more well-founded.

Activity Content: 

The economic activities in Lotus Community are in two different types, one is inside the community and the other one is outside the community. Regarding the economic activities that happened inside the community, there are lots of petty dealers that standing alongside the road inside the community. Most of them sell a small quantity of vegetables and fruits in baskets. Others are selling some old things which are not needed anymore. Moreover, there are also some tiny workshop for recycling. Additionally, there is a big store downstairs the community activity center to satisfy the daily need inside the community. Outside the community there are a small business center and a market . In the business center there are banks, restaurants, car wash also a small real estate agency. In the market, there are many dealers selling foods in a cheaper price than inside the community (Figure 3.1 &3.2).

  Figure 3.1: Big vegetable market in business center                    Figure 3.2:  small stores (cheaper foods)               

Problem Analysis：

However, although these two kinds of economic activities can satisfy the basic demand of the huge community. But meanwhile there are also some problem that come into being. First of all, the petty dealers inside the community are mostly come from outside, which means the security of these goods can’t be guaranteed. And those baskets which are full of goods that stand has bad esthetic influence as well. Moreover, plenty of space in the business center are wasted, and without completed infrastructure it is also a loss for the community. Also, the oneness of local enterprise's functions limited the long-term development (Li, 2010).

Solution:

Concentrate the business activities in a specific area, e.g. Small business center; Bazaar

Regulating and limit private business activities. (e.g. Food security, price, source)

Oversee the business activities (e.g. Suppress the activities)

Figure 5.1: basic condition of the site

Roads:

1. Most roads are in good condition (flat and with high walkability). However, bike lanes, pavements and car lanes are separated only on the roads outside and at the entrance of the community. Tricycles, motorcycles, cars and pedestrians are mixed in the neighborhood (Figure 5.1, 5.2) which reduced walkability and easy to cause traffic jams.

2.There are good pavements but they are concentrated on the main road of the neighborhood. On roads other than the main road, people can only walk in the lanes and need to watch out for cars. In general, the number of pavements is still not enough. Therefore, more pavements need to be built.

3. Many cars and motorcycles in the community are parked on the side of roads and paths, which create a dangerous condition for traffic intersection and people’s walking. And many of the community's public spaces are littered with cars. It not only takes up space for people activities, but also affect the accessibility of movement.

Figure 5.2                                                                                           Figure 5.3

Travel mode:

There is only one bus station in the south of the neighborhood while there are four bike stations (Figure 5.1). The only bus station is located outside the south gate of the community, which has a weak attraction ability to the residents in the north of the community. Moreover, there are only three bus routes through here. Furthermore, the facilitie of the bus station is dilapidated and without real-time bus information (Figure 5.4). Studies show that real-time bus information could help people quickly choose the best travel mode, significantly save time and improve travel efficiency (Wu, et al., 2019). Therefore, public transport like bus system needs to be improved. Bus stations and routes can be added appropriately. Bus stations can be made more advanced.

Figure 5.4

Survey Method:

 (1) I interviewed local residents.

 (2) I took observation methods such as taking photos.

Problem

1. Local resource utilization cannot form sustainable recycling system.

 Figure 6.1: Some unsorted garbage bins                                            Figure 6.2: A recycling bin for old clothes.

Specific Situation:  There were icons and explanatory information about garbage classification on the background board, but actually the community did not allocate garbage bins according to them (Figure 6.1). Figure 6.2 shown that the only recycling program in this community was to recycle old clothes, but residents did not make good use of it due to the small range of recycled items. 

Negative Impact:

Economic: This might increase the labor cost of garbage classification and additional material costs.

Environment: These were unsustainable. The waste of resources increased the extra energy consumption.

Social: It was inconvenient and inefficient for residents to go to distant places to recycle waste.

2. Rubbish and construction waste are strewn about the roads

 Figure 6.3: Random garbage bag                                                    Figure 6.4: Discarded building materials     

Specific situation: Many black garbage bags as shown in figure 6.3 are randomly placed on the roadside. Additionally, it is common for the building materials to be randomly discarded in the green space (Figure 6.4).

Negative impact:

Environment: Such behavior seriously polluted the built environment and destroyed the image of community.

Advantage Situation

1. Some residents used leftover building materials such as bricks and tiles to build practical public facilities (Figure 6.6).

2. Some residents spontaneously picked up recyclable garbage and building materials and traded them to distant recycling stations (Figure 6.5).

  Figure 6.5: Recycle air conditioner                                            Figure 6.6: A resting chair made of bricks       

Solution

Close Resource Loops (Figure 6.7): The waste materials are classified in situ to find recyclable materials, which could be repaired, recycled and re-used. For example, the old furniture recycling shop can be set up locally to reduce and increase the transportation of imported new products and exported wastes ( Barton, Grant and Guise, 2003).

      Figure 6.7: Close Resource Loops (Barton, Grant and Guise, 2003)

The water system in the second district of the Lotus Village is basically consisted of 3 parts:

(Figure 7.1 Water system)

Situation:

1. Domestic water

Domestic water in this district refers to the water consumed by everyday life activities, such as laundering, bathing and cooking. It is generally provided by the water supply company.

2. Inner-community water cycle basis

Inner-community water cycle basis is predominantly consisted of two parts. The first is captured roof rain water which can be recycled and used for life after filtration.This is used as a method of water saving by local residents. 

The second is the sewage system for transferring away domestic waste, which largely relies on the blowdown system built by the government. 

3. The flowing river

The river around makes the district more charming and add amenity to it. Besides, the river is largely related to the biodiversity of this district. Along the river there are many different kinds of plants, and there are birds inhabiting as well. In order to keep the water clean, cleaners take boats to remove the garbage and water pollutant. However the river may also cause some danger, and there is a warning sign reading ‘the river is deep and dangerous’ nearby.

 (Figure 7.2 Cleaner on the river)                                                (Figure 7.3 Various vegetation along the river)   

  (Figure 7.4 Warning sign)

Problems: 

1. It is observed that some sewage is directly discharged into the river and has already made a part of river severely polluted and hard to circulate.

2. The sewage system may be blocked and disabled sometimes, therefore pollute the environment of the community.

Solution:

The experiment directed by Abbas and other researchers on smart sewage system is of great referenced value to this case. Facilities such as smart turbidity sensors and water level indicators can be equipped to help manage the water system.

Interview:

Analysis:

Problems & Solution:

 1. Nonobservance of the zero carbon rule

Specific situation: Although as the chat indicates, the electricity and gas line cover the community well. There still are residents use firewood to make fire.

(Figure 8.1, the elderly is using the firewood to heat something)

Negative effect: Using firewood can be much cheaper than electricity and gas, but at the same time it can produce huge pollution to the air. Which does not follow the zero carbon rule.

Solution: Strengthening the use of firewood, using more renewable and decentralized energy systems. For instance, the wind turbines, photovoltaic cell, water turbines.

2.Over shadowing

Specific situation: The trees planted in the Lotus village are mainly camphor trees. According to Spengler, this kind of tree can grow to 150 feet tall and spread twice as wide(2018). In Lotus community, the camphor trees grow to about 8 meters tall, which block the sunrays for the low stories. As results, people live in first and second floor have to use more energy to heat during the winter.

Negative impact: Waste of energy.

Solution: Changing the camphor trees to another kind which is shorter.

Method：

Through field investigation and the data of biodiversity indicators in SIP were collected. The main plants, animals and biological networks in the community were investigated.

Analysis

The main analysis were as follows:  

Figure 9.1

Figure 9.2

Figure 9.3

After analyses the information, there are four problems:       

1. Low biodiversity and few species

According to the biodiversity survey report of SIP, there are around 769 plants species and 70 bird species in SIP (Wang and Lu et al., 2013). However, there are only around 21 plant species and 3 bird species in the lotus village district.

2. Lack of wildlife corridors (Barton, H., Grant, M., & Guise, R.,2003). There are fewer habitats for animals, such as poultry and birds, which have no room for their own activities.

3. Grasslands in open areas are scarce, there self-growing phenomena in private green planting space, such as dead banana trees and straw found in open areas. Many resident’s downstairs have their own plants and vegetables, such as camellia, potted plants. 

4. The open area green planting network planning is inappropriate. There are few types of landscape planning. The main green spaces are fragmented and disconnected.  

Figure 9.4: Dead banana trees (unsuitable plants)         Figure 9.5: Residents' vegetables and roses

Solution:         

1. Remove plants that are not suitable for growth. Abandoned unsustainable potted plants and vegetables.

2. Increase more animal and plant types.

3. Re-planning the open garden landscape and the private greening space.

4. Creating Green Corridors between buildings.

According to the analysis from the above nine aspects, every part has it’s own disadvantages 

This chart indicates the necessity of solving problems for each aspects. Through our research, the most efforts should be put into the facilities and movement.      

For the facilities, the rare public infrastructure and informal gates extremely inconvenience daily life of the residents. Therefore, more or better public facilities and gates should be provided.

For movement, the chaotic traffic and the disorder of vehicle parking lead to the unsafe pedestrians inside the community. The travel inconvenience of residents is caused by the lack of public transportation lines outside the community. Therefore, the problems may be solved internally by using the vacant residential ground floor as an open parking lot and adding bus routes externally.

In addition, communities need some improvements in energy, local businesses, food, and materials, while others also need to remain.

For energy, not environmental friendly energy source is still used. Additionally, the over shadowing is wasting a mass of energy for lightning and heating. Therefore, the renewable and decentralized power system are recommended, and the tree species should be changed to solve the over shadowing.

For Local enterprise, these unrestricted business activities not only affect security, aesthetic feeling but also the utilization of Lotus commercial center. Therefore, community should regulate private business activities in every aspect and utilise the commercial center more effectively as well.  

For food, the quality is low (poor sanitation, narrow space, Three-no food) and the type is not enough. Therefore, related community department should strengthen supervision of food safety and add more food supply stores.

For material, the main problem is the unsustainability of waste disposal due to the lack of waste sorting and recycling within the community. Therefore, it is suggested to adopt the closed resources loops so that resources are always in the state of repair, recycling and reuse.

Abbas, O. et al. (2017) ‘A large-scale experimentation of the smart sewage system’, Water & Environment Journal, 31(4), pp. 515–521. doi: 10.1111/wej.12273.

Barton, H., Grant, M., & Guise, R.(2003). Working with natural systems'. Shaping neighbourhoods: a guide for health sustainalbility and vitality. London and New York: Taylor  & Francis.

Cailian Community (2019). Local community introduction

Spengler ,T. (2018). Camphor Tree Growing: Camphor Tree Uses In The Landscape [Online] Available from: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/camphor-tree/camphor-tree-growing.htm (accessed date:  26,April)

Wang and Lu et al,. (2013). SIP Biodiversity Survey Report I (苏州工业园区生物多样性调查报告)

Wu, F., Hu, X. W., An, S., Zhang, D. (2019). ‘Exploring Passengers' Travel Behaviors Based on Elaboration Likelihood Model under the Impact of Intelligent Bus Information’, Journal of Advanced Transportation. p1-12. 12p. [Online]. Availiable from: http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=9727f751-7106-482f-ba58-901968d78aa5%40pdc-v-sessmgr05&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=135050862&db=asn (Accessed: 26 April 2019)