The failure and success of greenbelt program in Beijing

A second greenbelt is currently under construction in Beijing City, the capital of China. This greenbelt will consist of tree plantations, parks and open spaces, reserved agricultural lands, and residential areas and it has been proposed as a measure to confine urban sprawl by planners and the municipal administration. In this study, the greenbelt proposal was examined by using a method combining remote sensing and analysis of archived documents. The profile of the greenbelts in Beijing, including the geographic context, the planning approach, the implementation, and the administrative framework was analyzed. Also, the spatial and temporal changes of the greenbelts in the past decade were documented through analyzing satellite images. The results show that the first greenbelt failed to contain the expansion of the city. The underestimation of urban growth and the lack of participation by key stakeholders in the planning process are two main reasons for this failure. It is still unclear whether the second greenbelt can do better than the first greenbelt at this stage. The results from this study again confirm the suggestion that urban sprawl is hard to contain with an arbitrary boundary such as a greenbelt.