EC-Link – Sustainable Urbanisation Europe-China Eco-Cities Link
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The proportion of people in Chinese cities reached 52.6% in 2012 and will maintain a rapid development in the coming years. Meanwhile the quality and level of China's urbanisation have to be improved. This represents a massive challenge in economical, social and environmental terms for Chinese local decision-makers.
The aim of the EC-LINK project is to assist Chinese cities in their endeavour to meet the targets set in the 12th five year plan by providing technical assistance to MoHURD, sharing experiences on sustainable urbanisation and other relevant policies between Europe and China. EC-LINK will foster better information exchange, promote the outputs of pilot and demonstration projects, help Chinese and European cities and their groupings to link-up as well as providing toolboxes and give guidance to cities on ecological and low-carbon solutions.
Programme components:
- The low-carbon eco-cities development “support mechanism” will rely on a bilingual knowledge platform based on ICT and on a physical secretariat. It will deliver services for cities networking, knowledge sharing and dissemination;
- The “urban sustainability lab” will include activities to assist MoHURD in assembling toolboxes for local administrations that could be tested and applied in various cities including one EC-LINK pilot city;
- The “urban sustainability help-desk” will be implemented to strengthen the capacity of municipalities in applying eco-low carbon principles to urban planning, design and management (also on the basis of the tool boxes developed in (2) as well as in raising and accessing financing sources.
