China's Ambitious Car-Free City That Never Was

In October 2012, Chicago-based architecture firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill unveiled one of the most ambitious urban planning projects the world had ever seen. Near Chengdu, China's sprawling southwestern metropolis, they would build Great City—a revolutionary satellite community where cars were banned, everything was walkable, and 80,000 residents would live in harmony with nature.

The renderings were breathtaking. Sleek high-rise towers clustered at the center, surrounded by a 480-acre buffer of preserved farmland and open green space. No matter where you lived, you could walk to any destination in 15 minutes or less.

The Numbers Were Staggering

Great City wasn't just about aesthetics—it was engineered for radical sustainability:

• 48% less energy than a conventional city of similar size
• 58% less water consumption
• 89% less landfill waste
• 60% less carbon dioxide emissions

More than 60% of the 800-acre site would remain untouched—preserved for agriculture and open space. The urbanized core occupied just 320 acres, connected to Chengdu via mass transit. No private vehicles needed.

A Prototype for China's Future

Beijing Vantone Real Estate Co. developed the project as more than a single city. It was meant to be a replicable model—a template that could be stamped across China to solve the country's crushing urban infrastructure problems without creating more car-choked, polluted megacities.

Construction was announced for fall 2012, with completion expected around 2020-2021.

Then... nothing happened.

The Pattern of Abandoned Dreams

Great City joined a long list of China's eco-city projects that existed brilliantly in renderings but never materialized in reality. International architects, often with little understanding of Chinese politics, culture, and economics, designed visionary projects that couldn't survive contact with the real world.

Remember Dongtan? Billed as "the world's first eco-city" in 2005, it promised 50,000 residents living in energy-efficient buildings on an island near Shanghai, with waste recycled as fuel and waterfronts lined with micro-windmills. The first phase was supposed to open for the 2010 Shanghai Expo. It was never built.

Some 600 areas in China have labeled themselves "eco" developments, but as one researcher noted, many ventures weren't viable due to "the excessiveness of the projects, the gigantic economic costs."

What China Got Instead

Rather than sustainable utopias, China's building boom produced something else entirely: ghost cities. By 2020, an estimated 65 million homes sat empty across the country. The property bubble's deflation left millions of presold homes unfinished, with 20 million people paying mortgages on apartments that don't exist.

Chengdu itself has pursued more modest sustainability goals through its "Park City" strategy—creating networks of green spaces and the world's longest greenway system spanning nearly 20,000 kilometers of walking and cycling paths. Less revolutionary than Great City, but actually achievable.

The lesson? Sometimes the most visionary plans remain just that—visions. Great City stands as a reminder that sustainable urban planning requires more than stunning architecture. It requires the economic, political, and cultural conditions to actually break ground.