City announces ambitious green offensive

The city unveiled an ambitious plan today to improve its coverage of parks, forests and green space through the end of 2035.

As part of that plan, the Outer Ring Road green belt will have 100 kilometers of connected walking and biking tracks by the end of 2025, the Shanghai government said today. The project is currently in the planning stage, and the first tasks are to secure funds and connect different parts of the green belt.

"The green coverage of the city has significantly increased in recent years, but the scale and quality of our ecological spaces are not yet on par with global cities such as London, New York and Singapore," Deng Jianping, director of the Shanghai Greenery and Sanitation Bureau, said at a press conference.

By 2025, Shanghai plans to have at least 1,000 parks around the city, twice the current number, which is expected to increase to 2,000 by 2035, with the total coverage of grasslands, forests, wetlands, rivers and lakes surpassing 60 percent of total areas of Shanghai.

By 2035, the Outer Ring Road green belt will be connected to 10 green areas within the ring road and 17 ecological corridors outside it, with connections to the surrounding forest parks in the Five "New Cities" of Jiading, Qingpu, Songjiang, Fengxian and Nanhui.

Shanghai plans to increase its per capita green space from the current level of 8.5 square meters to more than 13 square meters by 2035, and increase its forest coverage from 18.5 percent to about 23 percent.