As part of its Urban Infrastructure Initiative, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has released its report on Yixing, a city of 1.25 million inhabitants in the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou delta, which was selected as the pilot city for China.

The Urban Infrastructure Initiative (UII) was launched by the WBCSD in 2010 to provide an interdisciplinary team of sustainability experts from industry who would work with city officials to assist with infrastructure development in that city. The experts are provided at the companies’ expense to emphasise the value of involving business at an early stage in the planning process. Initial cities selected for the UII with ICLEI’s assistance were Turku in Finland, Tilburg in the Netherlands and four cities in Gujarat in India. For Yixing, the UII team came from Siemens, Schneider Electric and AECOM, with the aim of assisting the city’s municipal government to be a demonstration city for sustainable development in China. Consultations began in April 2012 and ran until February of this year.

Two issues identified in the report for immediate action were the need to use a scientific approach to rational land use and the need to protect cultural and ecological assets through compact mixed-use urban design.