Many famous cities in the world have "green lungs". Is there one in Beijing? (much better now)—

(This article was originally published in Unity 1999 No.3)

"Green lung" refers to the forest in the middle or edge of the city. Comparing it to the green lung of a city is to emphasize the extreme importance of urban forests and green spaces to whether a city can become an environment suitable for human habitation. Just because of its importance, many cities in the world have made the "green lung" bigger and stronger.

There are 3,000 hectares of green space in the area of 0/05 square kilometer in Paris/Kloc, France, accounting for 35% of the urban area. Among them, the "East Green Lung" Wanseni forest covers an area of 995 hectares, and the "West Green Lung" Blagne forest covers an area of 846 hectares, with a total of 426 parks and gardens.

In Moscow, Russia, only the forest belt around the city is 15 km wide and covers an area of 1725 square kilometers, while the urban area is only 878 square kilometers. There are forests and a lot of green spaces in the city, with a per capita green space of 44 square meters.

Of course, there are other cities with more green space per capita than these two cities, such as Vienna with 70 square meters, Berlin with 50 square meters and Washington with 45.7 square meters. As you can imagine, the residents of these cities have a beautiful and comfortable living environment.

How about the ancient capital Beijing? There are also green spaces, but they are so few that people blush: within the area of 1.370 square kilometers in Chengba District, green spaces (including water surface) only account for 2.8%, while the average green space in the Second Ring Road and the Fourth District is less than 4 square meters, and Xuanwu District is only 1.94 square meters. The forest cannot be mentioned for the time being. The suburban green belt planned in the early 1950s is 300 square kilometers. After years of urban construction, there is only less than 100 square kilometers left. On the south bank of Guanting Reservoir, 70 kilometers away from the city center, there are sand dunes tens of meters high that move with the wind within nearly 100 square kilometers, harassing Beijing all the time. 1998 and 1999, there have been two yellow mud rains in Beijing. Densely populated areas in the city are suffocated by seriously polluted air. It is understood that the Beijing Municipal Government recently zoned a piece of land near Liulangzhuang in Haidian District and Tuanjiehu in Chaoyang District to plant trees, and Beijing will also have two green lungs. Of course, for a megacity like Beijing, these two little green lungs are really insignificant.

Forests not only play an extremely important role in non-urban areas, such as effectively conserving water and soil, curbing desertification, improving agricultural ecological environment, and preventing species reduction. More importantly, it can improve the living environment of the whole human being, and has the functions of purifying air, purifying water quality, controlling industrial pollution, promoting human health and satisfying human spiritual enjoyment. Most of the environmental pollutants in atmospheric precipitation are filtered by forest canopy, litter layer and soil layer, and disappear into the output water, and the water quality is purified. 1 hectare of green land can absorb 380 kilograms of nitrogen oxides and one hectare of forest can absorb 700 kilograms of sulfur dioxide a year, which can obviously reduce the harm of industrial acid rain (while using other methods, it costs 1.6 million yuan per ton of nitrogen oxides and more than 3,000 yuan to remove one ton of sulfur dioxide). The noise can be reduced by 30 decibels after passing through the 36-meter-wide forest belt. The dust retention rate of urban forest belt is as high as 70%.

When there is 25% green in human vision, people will feel relaxed and comfortable. The research shows that the ecological protection value of forest is 6- 10 times that of direct production of wood and forest products. Obviously, not only non-urban areas, especially urban areas, can not lack forests. The Loess Plateau in China was covered with trees and lush aquatic plants 3000 years ago, and the forest coverage rate reached 53% in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Therefore, that land gave birth to the great Chinese civilization. At present, the forest coverage rate in this area is only 6. 1%, so it has become one of the areas with the lowest productivity and the poorest people's lives in China. As British environmental ecologist Granger said, "forest is the source of all life ... if a culture wrongfully offends the forest, the decline of living things is inevitable." China's ancient "Mandarin" also recorded that "there are no trees in the road", and it was predicted that Chen would die, and it really came true. There are many places in China today where there are no trees on the road. Although Beijing is not a "road without trees", there are not many trees listed. Although we can't say that this phenomenon indicates that the country will die, we might as well say; The Chinese nation has reached the most dangerous time!

In this regard, the central and many local leaders attach great importance to it. Recently, Wen Jiabao, Vice Premier of the State Council, made a special talk on the construction of urban green space and forests at the18th plenary meeting of the National Greening Committee. He said, "... the old urban area should be combined with urban transformation and expansion, and efforts should be made to expand the green area. ..... we should pay special attention to the greening of metropolitan areas, strive to build large-scale environmental forest belts and develop' forest cities' and' garden cities'. "(People's Daily1April 5, 999)

In order to improve the ecological environment of the capital, develop the capital economy, and implement the above instructions of Vice Premier Wen Jiabao, the author boldly put forward a suggestion: gradually change the homestead of the old bungalow in the old city of Beijing's Second Ring Road into woodland, and with the gradual demolition of these houses, all the land will be used for afforestation. Ten or twenty years later, the urban area within the Second Ring Road will become a forest park, creating a big green lung in the center of Beijing. Together with the 25 historical and cultural protection zones designated by the Capital Planning Commission, the old city within the Second Ring Road will become a large-scale forest park with strong cultural atmosphere and beautiful scenery.

The old city with Tiananmen Square as the center in the Second Ring Road of Beijing should be the first good area of the capital. Now, Tiananmen Square is the most dilapidated place in Beijing, except for some tall buildings on both sides of wide streets and some modern atmosphere. After visiting Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, foreign tourists, whether they go to Chongwen, Xuanwu, Dongcheng and Xicheng, are nothing more than dilapidated bungalows, most of which are almost dangerous buildings. A friend of mine came to Beijing from his hometown in northern Jiangsu and stayed at Qianmen for a few days. They said to me, "this is not like the capital, but much worse than Jiangsu!" " The capital is the "face" of the country, and this image of the capital really disappoints the Chinese people. Today, with the increasing degree of urban modernization in Beijing, it is time to transform the old city in the Second Ring Road.

So, how to transform it? The population in this area is too dense and the traffic congestion is extremely serious. If residential buildings are built here again, the traffic situation will only deteriorate. Evacuating residents here should be the only choice for Beijing's urban construction and development. So, how can residents leave this treasure land? In fact, it is not difficult. As long as the leaders take the lead, things in China should be easy: the central state organs and the leading organs in Beijing should set an example and take the lead. When officials leave, they can confidently do the work of ordinary people. In order to break the difficult situation of Beijing's old city reconstruction at this stage, the leading organs have the responsibility and obligation to take the lead, because they are public servants serving the people, which is also of great political significance for improving the image of the ruling party and strengthening the relationship between the party and the masses. With the reform of political system and administrative management system, the scale of government agencies is shrinking. Maybe a few buildings can get rid of it at low cost.

The Xishan area in the western suburbs of Beijing used to be the place where the central leaders held meetings and rested. Why not build some high-rise buildings and work here? Setting aside some places in the open area along the Fourth Ring Road to concentrate on building office buildings of state organs and Beijing leading organs can not only improve administrative efficiency because of the relative concentration of leading organs, but also greatly reduce official vehicles if the official residences of senior and middle-level officials are built nearby, which not only reduces the financial burden of the country, but also improves traffic conditions and reduces the degree of air pollution. Coupled with the construction of various service facilities, it may be an efficient investment and a powerful step to stimulate domestic demand, at least for the economic development of the capital. In this way, some places in the suburbs can "create" gold treasures similar to those in the Second Ring Road today, which will certainly bring important and extremely rare opportunities for the economic development of the capital, and new prosperous areas in Beijing will appear-at least for the real estate industry, which is quite depressed at present, this will be a godsend opportunity to revive its glory. By then, when real estate developers erect tall buildings there, they will not only provide modern rooms for residents of an old city in the Second Ring Road, but also turn their original residence into a forest after residents move out; Of course, the units and citizens who stay in the old city should also take care of these forests. This should be what Wen Jiabao said: "Combining the transformation and expansion of the old city to expand the green area". At least, as long as the Beijing municipal government is willing, Moscow-style forest belts can be built in a planned way now. The national condition of China is that there is too little arable land to build a forest belt with a width of15km. Just build a 5 km wide forest belt! There are so many government agencies and institutions in Beijing, as long as each unit is given a piece of land to plant trees and adopted for a long time (Beijing Daily reported on May 7 1999 that more than 65,438 mu of barren hills in Miyun Reservoir were recently claimed by some units in the city), there will be forests around the city within a few years. If Beijing can really create such a considerable green lung, not only will Beijing's city look brand-new, but the living environment and quality of life of Beijingers will also be greatly improved, and cities all over the country will follow suit, the ecological environment of China will be greatly improved, and the quality of life of people will also be greatly improved. Perhaps it is conceivable that by then, the forest coverage rate in China will be greatly improved, and ecological conditions will be available to realize the great rejuvenation of Chinese civilization.

Fortunately, since the beginning of this year, Beijing has vigorously strengthened the construction of urban green space, and the illegal buildings covering an area of 2.6 million square meters will be demolished in the downtown area, and 900,000 square meters of green space will be built. By the time of writing this article, considerable results have been achieved. The outer suburbs will also be afforested 1093 hectares. A few days ago, it was reported that the state will invest 200 million yuan to build another 3 million mu of ecological protection forest north of Beijing and Tianjin, and Beijing has also issued an exciting 50-year ecological environment construction plan. However, this idea of Beijing's green lungs may be purely self-entertainment, so it is named "imagination".