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Rapid urbanisation, ecological effects and sustainable city construction in Xiamen

The year 2008 marked one of the most important stages in mankind’s development. For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s human population lives in urban areas (UNPF 2008), which means that the world has now entered the urban society age. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation requires the initiation and promotion of science or study of the urban environment, to find a way to integrate or couple urban development and eco-environment processes for sustainable cities (Zhao et al. 2008). A sustainable city, in general, is a city that supplies sustainable welfare to its people, with the capacity to maintain and improve its ecosystem services (Zhao et al. 2009). We have taken Xiamen City as a case study to examine how a sustainable city can be constructed. Xiamen, also known as Amoy, is a typical coastal city located on the southeast coast of Fujian Province, China, facing the Taiwan Strait (24 250–24 550N, 117 530–118 270E) (Figure 1). Xiamen City comprises Xiamen Island, Gulang Island and the coastal part to the north Jiulong River. It has a land area of 1565 km and a sea area of 390 km.Xiamen Island is the fourth largest island of Fujian Province and covers an area of 128.14 km,with a length of 13.7 km from south to north and a width of 12.5 km from east to west. Xiamen is located in the southeast monsoon area and has a subtropical climate, with annual average rainfall of 1100 mm and annual average temperature of 21 C. Due to air currents resulting from the differential temperature in the Pacific Ocean, Xiamen is affected by typhoons three to four times per year on average, which mainly occur during the summer, from July to September. In Xiamen, the dominant landforms are low hills and mesa, and the terrain slants from northwest to southeast. The zonal vegetation type is subtropical evergreen broadleaf forest, withAcacia richii,Pinus massoniana,Casuarina equisetifolia andEucalyptus citriodora as major tree species. Along the coastline, there are about 21 ha of mangroves. There are only tens of terrestrial wildlife species, but more than 5000marine species, including four rare species, lancelet (Branchiostoma belcheri), Chinese white dolphin (Sousa chinensis chinensis), horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) and two egrets (Egretta sacra and Egretta eulophotes). At present, these rare species are protected in the Xiamen National Nature Reserve for Rare Marine Species. Xiamen was one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The embryonic form of the city emerged on Xiamen Island in the early nineteenth century. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Xiamen experienced a tortuous urbanisation process. Since establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the urban master plan defined Xiamen as a harbour city, an industrial base, a place for convalescence and a defence city. Due to the special background of the Taiwan Strait, rapid urban expansion and economic development of Xiamen was not triggered until implementation of the reform and opening-up policy in 1980, when the Xiamen Special Economic Zone was set up. Since then, Xiamen has undergone rapid urbanisation, and its urban population and built-up area has grown at an unprecedented rate. In 2008, the regular population of Xiamen reached 2.49 million, and the proportion of the urban population to the total population was nearly 70%. There are six districts under the administration of Xiamen: Siming, Huli, Jimei, Haicang, Tong’an and Xiang’an. The downtown area is mainly on Xiamen Island (including Siming and Huli districts), and the off-island districts are mainly peri-urban areas. During the past three decades, rapid industrial development and population growth have led to significant increases in environmental pollution and decreases in ecological services. The rapid urbanisation process has triggered profound changes in land use and land cover, which have caused the landscape pattern to change greatly. Moreover, global change, combined with the urban heat island effect, may have an effect on the regional climate, which could directly or indirectly influence human health. Xiamen’s rapid urbanisation and its impacts on local ecosystems have led to concerns from many experts in relation to ecology, economics and sociology. As a typical example of China’s rapid urbanisation, protection of ecosystems, promotion of urban efficiency and sustainable urbanisation of Xiamen is important for regional development in southeast China and is the subject of intense research. The research is mainly supported by the 100 Talents Program, the Academy-Locality Cooperation Program and the Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KZCX2-YW-422; KZCX2-YW-450), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2009DFB90120), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (40701059) and the Bureau of Science and Technology of Xiamen (3502Z20072002). The papers in this special issue on Xiamen City aim to trace the rapid urbanisation process, understand the relationship between urbanisation and the urban environment, and International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology Vol. 17, No. 4, August 2010, 271–272