Assessing the Sustainable Building Policy in Shanghai, China

The building sector plays a key role in global economic, social and environmental development; the sustainable building issue has already been wildly accepted as a consensus which can be considered as a specific performance of sustainable development. The building industry is a large user of energy, water, material and land, all of which have an affect on the environment. China is experiencing a very fast economic growth and urbanization period and it is facing the most serious environmental and social issues ever. Large numbers of migrants swarm into the urban areas from rural areas, for which many houses are required. The energy efficiency is very low in China and the building sector associated with relevant sectors consumes 46.7% of the total amount of the national energy consumption. What is worse, although the designed life-cycle of the houses is 50 years, the average life-cycle in reality is 30 years. Most of the existing stock has been demolished instead of renovated even before the designed life cycle. In 1986 the Chinese government formulated a series of policies which were relevant to sustainable building issues. Although both the national government and the local government have already paid much attention to sustainable building issues, many barriers in this area still exist. This research attempts to analyse Shanghai's current sustainable building policy and identify the strong and weak points. Furthermore, the study exams the performance of the Tongji University campus programme in Shanghai. Finally, it tries to give suggestions to the potential approaches for sustainable building development in China. Based on the proposed framework using an extensive literature review, a combination of research approaches combined with qualitative methods (in-depth interviews) and quantitative methods (surveys) were developed for this research. There were ten respondents which were divided into four groups: local authority officers, university managers, design team and private developer managers. The results of the qualitative methods were used to identify the sustainable building policy design and implementation from the perspective of different stakeholders. The respondents of the survey were chosen from the Tongji campus, most of them were highly educated. The research attempted to analysis the public awareness of sustainable buildings amongst the people of the sustainable campus program. According to the analysis, several factors were identified. 1) There were no specific local policies based on the national core strategy. It is simply a repetition of the national policy without the local planning. 2) The awareness of the development control officer, the developer and the design team were high, while they were more focused on the energy issues for the special national conditions. 3) The capacity of local industries are a key element of high incremental costs of sustainable building. 4) The law enforcement is worried that mandatory regulation is needed. 5) There are no third party organizations which meet in the local context to assess sustainable building. 6) The official rating systems are not explicit and authentic that the market is more willing to adopt the LEED as the main rating system while the government encourages the combination of those different two systems. 7) The public is not greatly aware of the sustainable campus program. Based on the analysis of this research recommendations were suggested to improve the sustainable building policy in Shanghai. 1) A local policy based on the national strategy needs to be developed. 2) Public awareness should be promoted 3) A clear and efficient monitoring system should be established 4) Strengthen the enforcement of the law. 5) Establish an effective incentive mechanism. 6) Develop a comprehensive rating system which meets the local context.