Money

Restless district wants to be wide awake around the clock

By Zhao Yanrong (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-10 09:32

Laborers work on a power cable tower in Tongzhou district. A wave of construction is expected as Tongzhou plans to become a "sleepless" district.

Tongzhou will become a "sleepless district" that under ambitious plans that call for business and high-end entertainment to be ramped up so they are vibrant 24/7 in the coming decade.

A Tongzhou district official said it will echo the expansion of Beijing's Central Business District.

"Unlike other big cities around the world, such as New York and London, where the streets are busy during the day but empty at night, the new Tongzhou will be a 'sleepless' district that will be full of people, both during the day and at night," Wang Yunfeng, Party secretary of Tongzhou district, told qianlong.com, the Beijing government's news website on Monday.

Wang said the key to Tongzhou's vitality will be the subway lines that converge on the area.

"There will be as many as eight subway lines covering Tongzhou district in the future. The subway Line 6 project will definitely start within this year and the Line S6 program might begin this year too," he said.

The "express subway R1" will also be built in the district, Wang added. That plan calls for the R1 line to link Tongzhou district with the World Trade Center in Beijing's Central Business District. The line will have express trains that only stop at major stations and cover the ground much faster than existing lines.

Tongzhou district will link by highway to towns and development zones outside Beijing in Hebei Province and Tianjin.

"We are standing on the shoulders of giants by borrowing the experiences of Beijing Olympics' preparation," he added. "Our development speed will be very quick."

The cost of housing in Tongzhou district is already rising fast on the strength of the plans.

According to local realty firms, the cost of apartments has shot up by almost 5,000 yuan per sq m in the past month.

"The average price in Tongzhou was 10,000 yuan per sq m before Chinese New Year but most properties are selling now for about 15,000 yuan per sq m," said Li Xiaojun, a representative from Homelink, one of the biggest agencies in Beijing.

Li said few homeowners are selling property at the moment because of a series of government polices aimed at controlling house prices, but he said there is a lot of demand from would-be buyers.

"It's possible that properties will be sold for 30,000 yuan per sq m in the future because Tongzhou is going to be built as a first-class district with all kinds of social infrastructure," he said.

Pan Xiaona, who has been working in Tongzhou district as a high school teacher since 2003, is not a fan of the plan.

"Tongzhou hasn't changed much in the past seven years, except there are more people squeezing onto the crowded buses with me," Pan said.

She believed the development plan will bring in more people and business opportunities but says that when the district is full of people working and recreating 24-hours a day, it will be too noisy and time for her to leave.