Bridge Builders:
Wei Yang

We are all accidents of history and geography, but some of us get dropped into more fascinating times than others. Imagine the changes you'd witness if you were born in Athens at the dawn of democracy, or Rome under Caesar, or London in the second half of the 19th century. 

Now imagine being born in Beijing in 1974. Further suppose your mother was a professor in environmental planning with an interest in architecture – implanting in you lifelong fascinations with both, and kindling a career which would take you around the world seeking the best possible ways to embrace growth without destroying the planet.

Such has been the path for Wei Yang. As one of the world's more respected urban planners, she is known for favoring a 'garden city' approach to urban renewal – but also for prompting holistic thinking by promoting cooperation between different stakeholders in the built and natural environments. 

Her success can be measured by the projects she has helped deliver – to which we will come in time – and gauged by a quick glance at the positions she has attained, including British Library board member, honorary professor at University College London and a steering committee member of the UN Habitat World Urban Campaign, not to mention becoming president of the Royal Town Planning Institute… and all before the age of 50.

And it all started, as so many ideas do, by listening to her parents.

In 1996, Yang completed a bachelor's degree in urban planning at Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology. She then volunteered in a Chinese vernacular architecture research group – but any fan of architecture tends to look around carefully, and she was keen to broaden her horizons by taking a master's degree in Europe. 

In particular, she had her eye on a European city built on seven hills. And the plan worked, but not quite as she expected. 

"I was very keen to go to Rome to study all the fascinating squares," she says – and it made perfect sense to head for the home of a famous empire which had indulged in detailed and pioneering urban planning as it expanded over the centuries.

However, there was a problem – "They didn't offer degree courses for masters students" – and Yang was forced to look around again. Her eye wandered 2,000 kilometers north-west, to another city said to be founded on seven hills: Sheffield, in northern England. 

The city came to prominence during the industrial revolution – the quality of its steel was renowned worldwide – but lies nestled in gorgeous surroundings: a third of it lies within the Peak District National Park. And it's this combination of the urban and the rural that attracted Yang. 

"I applied to Sheffield because on their brochure they said, 'If you like countryside you will like Sheffield,'" she smiles. 

Quite aside from the invigorating Pennine air, Yang discovered a fresh way of looking at her subject.   

"I'd studied in architectural school, but my subject was on computer-aided environmental design," she says. "So it was a new thing for me to study because it was very much about green buildings and sustainable design."

Added dimension

Yang admits that sustainability added a whole new dimension to her worldview. "I was keen to be a great designer, thinking about the appearance of the building," she says. "I was very much focused on the esthetic point – how to make it beautiful and approachable. At the time, I wasn't really thinking very much about the sustainable part, it wasn't on my radar.

"But the course really transformed my thinking. I learned about how we can design buildings to consider a long-term sustainability. We need to think about human users, but also we need to think about how sustainable – it's really about the form of the building and also the urban structure."

Yang studied in Sheffield from 1999, getting her master's degree in 2001 and adding a PhD four years later, as part of an EU-funded project called Rediscovering the Urban Realm and Open Spaces. Professionally and personally, it was a time of new challenges and growth. 

"At the time there weren't many Chinese people in the UK," she recalls. "Quite often I met people and they told me I was the first Chinese they'd ever met."

Meanwhile, adapting her professional worldview helped her to see her role in a new light.   

"The planning profession started from three key principles," she says. "Number one is compassion, second is selflessness and third is creativity. Creativity is not only about creating technologies or a product, creativity can also relate to create a new methodology and a new mechanism."

As she moved into her next phase, the new mechanism was a fresh look at an existing concept: the garden city. 

While some may see the heyday of the garden city concept as a utopian ideal of the past, Yang knows from personal experience that the conversation is still very relevant in parts of the world undergoing rapid urbanization. 

"The garden city idea was talking about having a marriage of town and country, so you can have both the job opportunity, but also you can have a good, healthy, beautiful living environment," she says. "I think actually that's what people want, so this idea could be very relevant to China.

"I worked in the UK as a town planner for two years before I started to work in China on planning projects – my first one back to China was around 2010. 

"Before China opened up, China was mainly a rural country. So there was a huge rural population and then because of the very fast urban development and also economic development, a lot of the rural population moved to urban areas.

"The Chinese large cities were the primary focus of urban development – megacities like Beijing, Shanghai. But China is such a vast country with different provinces, and even between different villages, the culture can be very different. 

"How we can preserve this diversity and the variety is so important. So I believe we need a different model to think about how we can protect and develop small and medium sized cities and towns in China. So that's why the garden city model is so relevant to China.

"The Chinese development maybe 30 or 40 years ago was very much copying the American style – large cities that long to be international cities, and the model they copy is New York or some American cities. At the time, people know American movies, so a lot of people had an 'American dream'." 

With her experience of the UK, Yang now sees a clearer parallel. "China has a rich culture and the UK has a rich culture. A lot of Chinese culture, it's not only about being in larger cities, it's also in villages and also in smaller towns. 

"In the UK, villages were abandoned as people moved to large cities to find job opportunities, but later on there was a beautifying project in the UK for villages to be revitalized. I think that trend will happen in China – there'll be a lot of useful experiments for China to have as well."

Compared to the UK's detectable but fairly piecemeal reaction to its countryside depopulation, China's rural revitalization policies will be much more proactive – and Yang thinks lessons can be learnt from both the rural return and the garden city movement. 

"That made me very interested in the garden city idea and I think that is very relevant to the future development of small- and medium-sized towns and small villages in China."

As befits an urban planner, Yang took the best parts of the foundations and expanded upon them. "I call it 21st Century Garden Cities, because there were a lot of initial great principles we can use, but in the 21st century we have different challenges – climate change, biodiversity decline, quite different types of social issues. And we have technology change as well, so it's really about how we can use the best technology to make sure we can create sustainable communities for the future for our communities."

Sustainability redefined

Lateral thinking can lead to broadmindedness, and Yang applies a new thought process to the very idea of sustainability – for example, refuting the notion that only technological advances can save us. 

"To make a building sustainable, it's not really about technology and cost – it's really about how you design in a more effective way," she insists. "It relates to local context – for example, the local microclimate and the orientation of the building. 

"We should also use low-tech rather than high-tech. For example, if a building can use natural ventilation, it would be much more healthy for people to live there and you can reduce a lot of running costs because you don't need a lot of mechanical equipment. 

"You have to think about the lifespan of the building cost, to make sure the building is easy to maintain and user-friendly. And you need to think about how you can communicate all of these ideas so future users can understand and use it properly.

"It's not only about the physical admin, it's really about the whole process – design a building and build a building and use a building. And also after that, what's the afterlife of that building?"

Having caught the attention in both the UK and China, Yang found herself in governmental demand. 

"In 2013 I was seconded by the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be an expert in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development, and I was the co-chair of UK-China Eco-Cities and Green Building Group," she recalls.

"During that time, I went to China a lot to lead trade missions, to showcase the UK's best examples, and give lectures on sustainable development. Some of our projects became a national pilot project – how to think about a long-term development strategy for an integrated urban/rural approach. And when China started the national spatial planning reform, I was one of the experts to give advice to the Chinese ministry."

One piece of advice was very simple: Nature is a resource.

"We need to think about nature as part of the key national resource, to think about land as part of the natural reserve," she insists. "My recommendation was taken by the national spatial planning reform to talk about how we can integrate the beauty of nature into urban development and how we can design human-scaled public realm and city scale, and how we can think about the better integrated urban rural development."

During the 2020 lockdown, Yang kept herself typically busy, co-authoring a book called Humanistic Pure Land and Garden Cities, "talking about the connections between garden cities and Buddhism. Compassion is the foundation why the garden city movement started in the first place, and I believe Buddhism is the philosophy behind lots of people's thinking in Chinese."

Comparing cultures

With experience of both sides, Yang says "There's a lot that China and the UK can learn from each other.

"On the UK side, there's a lot of experiments China can learn from. The UK has been doing fantastic in terms of thinking about sustainable development, and also preserving the cultural heritage – like the model of the National Trust. 

"Chinese is a very open culture – Chinese people are quite willing to adapt to new technologies, they have an open mind. Actually, that mindset helped me to think about how we can modernize the garden city concept to make sure it's related to a 21st century context. 

"One of China's strengths is thinking strategically and consolidating all efforts together to make things done. In the UK, a lot of consideration is given on different subjects for some time; maybe it needs a more joined-up approach to get things done in a more efficient way."

So does Yang see a huge difference between the two in the old-fashioned task of Getting Things Done?

"In the UK, the planning system is very rigid because there are so many stakeholders involved, and the process can take a very long time – we need to create a shared vision at a much earlier stage. In China I think people are much more focused to get things delivered."

That focus has made things happen, and quickly. 

"China has transformed significantly in the last 10 years," she says. "When I first started to talk about green buildings in China it was a relatively new concept – but now all the buildings are required to achieve a certain green-building standard. 

"Also, sustainability is very high on the urban development agenda. In China, people accept new concepts in a very fast way as soon as they understand the benefit to society. 

"I think that's something the UK can learn from China – how to adapt to this new technology quicker. That's why I'm very much hoping we could really have more cultural exchanges so people can be more open.

"It's really important to understand what are the key principles we need to follow and what is the key thing we want to achieve. And once you are more focused, we can reach a consensus much more."

Yang defines herself as an advocate and a leader, and her passionate clarity is a call to the improvement our planet desperately needs. 

"There's a global vacuum to be filled by a profession to take a lead to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals – I believe that role must be taken by planners," she says. "I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the planning profession because it's about the future – our future, our future generations' future. 

"I want to call for a revival of spirit and modernize the planning profession to proactively address the 21st-century challenges. When our future members look back in 100 years' time, it is my deepest wish to be remembered in this way. 

"I believe the fundamental objective of the planning profession is to create a balanced system for people, nature and society to coexist in harmony. A modernized planning profession is a profession for hope, and the future is the faith in our ability to act together."

It's a mindset she was also loved to see applied to the building of bridges between the UK and China. 

"The UK and China are both great countries, which I love very much," she says. "If you compare them, there are more similarities than differences in many ways – primarily people's concerns about happiness, house and friendship, and how to contribute to society.

"For me, building bridges is a natural thing because I love both countries and just want to share my experience and introduce more friends and more people to understand both China and the UK. I would encourage more friends to go to China, to see by themself and to meet the real Chinese people."

Inspiration through collaboration

One more time, she returns to the theme of collaboration.  

"The challenges we face are global, so only through international collaboration can we possibly resolve them. We need to take an open approach. I would like to see in the next 30 years more collaborations between the two countries to see how we can tackle the grand challenges. 

"Both the UK and China are world-leading countries in many ways – on technology, development and cultural leadership, and the role so many developing countries are looking to these two countries to find new ways to resolve their own problems. I think we need more collaboration to really show the best way."

With one more final rousing oratory, she closes her case in a manner with which nobody could argue. 

"There is no age and gender difference in our spirit, no race difference in our soul," she says. "As long as we believe in ourselves, our vision and our effort, we can all make a lasting difference for good."

And all this from someone under the age of 50. Imagine what she might achieve in her next half-century, if only enough people will listen.