Milan’s tiny forest towers just inspired an entire Chinese city

In Milan, two residential towers named Bosco Verticale, or ‘Vertical Forest’, were finished in 2014 wrapped almost completely in greenery. According to Stefano Boeri Architetti, the firm behind them, the towers filter between 15 and 17.5 tons of soot out of the air every year. That result is now being tested on a much bigger scale, more than 8,000 kilometres away in southern China.

The firm’s biggest project so far is Liuzhou Forest City, a planned neighbourhood on the northern edge of Liuzhou, a city of roughly 1.5 million people in the mountainous Guangxi region. The 175-hectare site runs along the Liujiang river and was chosen partly because Liuzhou already struggles with heavy smog from rapid industrial growth nearby. The masterplan has been commissioned by the Liuzhou Municipality Urban Planning Bureau.

Unlike the two towers in Milan, this project spans an entire district: offices, homes, hotels, schools and even a hospital, all designed to carry trees, shrubs and plants as part of the building structure itself. The plan calls for around 40,000 trees and close to a million plants across more than 100 species, covering rooftops, balconies and facades throughout the neighbourhood.

Stefano Boeri Architetti estimates the vegetation could absorb close to 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide and roughly 57 tons of fine particulate pollutants every year, while producing about 900 tons of oxygen annually. The greenery is also meant to lower the urban heat island effect, reduce traffic noise and provide habitat for birds, insects and small animals already living nearby.

The neighbourhood is designed to largely power itself, drawing on geothermal energy for heating and cooling and rooftop solar panels for electricity, and connecting to the rest of Liuzhou through a dedicated rail line reserved for electric vehicles.

The firm has already completed smaller standalone vertical-forest towers in Nanjing and has floated similar forest-city concepts for other polluted Chinese cities, including Shijiazhuang. As China continues adding tens of millions of new city dwellers every year, Boeri has described projects like Liuzhou as an attempt to show that dense urban living and genuine biodiversity do not have to be at odds.