Short film draws attention to city planning

BEIJING - A short film made by Chinese university students has shone a spotlight on deficiencies in Beijing's urban planning, leading netizens to register their own complaints about the city's design.

The short film "City Miss" was created as a graduation project for three art students majoring in animation and digital art at the Communication University of China. Tian Changle, Han Di and Li Xinyi used the film to share their thoughts and suggestions regarding Beijing's city planning, particularly its traffic regulations.

The video has received nearly half a million hits on Youku.com, a popular Chinese video-sharing site. While some have complimented the students' professional filmmaking skills, most have focused on the new ideas raised by the students in the clip.

Basing their ideas on months of on-the-road investigation and academic research, the students called for more consideration to be given toward public transportation and pedestrian traffic when designing traffic regulation and road layouts.

The students suggested building low-fee parking lots near subway stations to encourage people to use public transportation when traveling in downtown areas.

Although many netizens agreed with the students' ideas, others stated that their theories would be too impractical to put into place. However, the students were largely praised for making a proactive attempt to understand city planning issues.

The students said their love for quieter times in the city's past, as well as a feeling of disappointment with current traffic management, motivated them to make the film.

Tian said that although they were initially unfamiliar with the subject of their video, they managed to gain more confidence by putting in a lot of research time and writing their own scripts for the video.

"We read nearly every book we could find in the National Library regarding urban planning," Tian said.

Tian said the video's animation, which lays out Beijing's urban planning through several easy-to-understand visuals, helped make it popular among netizens.

It even attracted the attention of the local government.

"It was indeed remarkable that these students could obtain such deep knowledge of urban planning. If they knew a little more theory, they could have done even better," read a comment from "hexiechengguan," the official microblog account of the city's urban management authorities.

The video was given special recognition by the students' university, although they believe the recognition they have received from the public is an even greater achievement.

"Now it is far more than a graduation project," Tian said.

"City planning affects everyone," said Han, adding that all citizens should be aware of their right to take part in planning the city's future," instead of merely waiting for the institutions to make a decision."