Organizing Multi-faceted Collaboration: Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway Green Corridor Plan

As a historically significant railway in China, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway has been gradually besieged by the expanding urban area, which brought about negative effects. Due to the XXIV Beijing Winter Olympics, the railway is going to be upgraded into a new, underground, and high-speed one. As the previous plan, the vacated ground space would be transformed into a highway. Yet, the Beijing Forestry University(BFU) interdisciplinary research team, consist of the school of Landscape architecture, BFU, collaborating with residents, railway enthusiasts, experts and scholars, deputies of the National People's Congress, government officials and medias put forward the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway Green Corridor Plan, a 9-kilometer green corridor instead of the highway, connecting the suburbs and the multi-functional urban core area. However, how to promote this proposal is the most crucial and tough problem.

BFU research team adopted multi-faceted collaboration mechanism (four phases) including exploratory research, exhibition and social promotion, conceptual planning and starter action, which catalyzed open communication among a broad range of relevant parties.

In the phase of exploratory research, an exploratory research project for integrated spatial transformations of former Beijing-Zhangjiakou railway ground was initiatively launched by BFU research team comprising of professional and students from landscape architecture, urban planning and design, architecture, engineering, ecology, etc.

For the sake of deeper understanding, greater influence and more support, BFU research team started the exhibition and social promotion phase. Three exhibitions, sharing the research in way of rich graphics and interactive media, had been curated in the central area of Beijing.

With in-depth research and expanded public influence by BFU interdisciplinary research team, and the participation of deputies of the National People's Congress, the government abandoned the original highway plan in favor of new green-corridor initiatives. Subsequently, BFU research team was commissioned to carry out the conceptual planning of Beijing-Zhangjiakou green corridor.

In order to explore the feasibility of this plan and gather the consensus of different stakeholders, the government wants to construct an exploratory starter area. Therefore, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway Park was built in a 750-meter section of the core in 2019, where a series of multi-participation programs has been executed.

The Beijing Forestry University interdisciplinary research team adopted the action-oriented collaboration workflow, in which multi-party groups related to the project were closely connected. The conceptual plan has recently entered the new stage of implementation and the research team will exert more positive influence for the win-win outcome in the future.