China’s newest ‘forest city’ will breathe for 1.5 million people

In 2014, two residential towers went up in Milan wrapped almost entirely in trees and shrubs. Bosco Verticale, or ‘Vertical Forest’, was small by city standards, just two buildings, but according to architect Stefano Boeri’s own firm, it filters between 15 and 17.5 tons of soot out of the air every year. More than a decade later, that experiment is being scaled up into an entire Chinese neighbourhood.

Stefano Boeri Architetti’s biggest project yet is Liuzhou Forest City, planned for the northern edge of Liuzhou, a city of roughly 1.5 million people in China’s mountainous Guangxi region. The 175-hectare site runs along the Liujiang river in an area already struggling with smog from rapid industrial growth, and the masterplan has been commissioned by the Liuzhou Municipality Urban Planning Bureau.

Unlike Bosco Verticale, this will not be a pair of towers but an entire district: offices, homes, hotels, schools and even a hospital, all designed to carry greenery as a structural feature rather than a decorative afterthought. The plan calls for around 40,000 trees and close to a million plants across more than 100 species, covering rooftops, balconies and building facades throughout the neighbourhood.

Boeri’s firm estimates the vegetation could absorb close to 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide and about 57 tons of fine particulate pollutants each year, while releasing roughly 900 tons of oxygen. Beyond air quality, the dense greenery is meant to reduce the urban heat island effect, dampen traffic noise and give birds, insects and small animals a foothold inside the city.

The neighbourhood is also designed to run largely on its own power, using geothermal energy for heating and cooling and rooftop solar panels for electricity, with a dedicated electric-vehicle rail line linking it to the rest of Liuzhou.

It will not stay unique for long if Boeri’s firm has its way. Similar forest-city concepts have been floated for other polluted Chinese cities such as Shijiazhuang, and standalone vertical-forest towers using the same approach are already standing in Nanjing. With China adding tens of millions of new city residents every year, the firm sees projects like Liuzhou as proof that density and greenery can coexist rather than compete.