BEIJING: Beijing’s Haidian District, home to the capital’s high tech hub Zhongguancun Science Park, is striving to build a livable community featuring high quality of life while maintaining a steady growth momentum as the capital’s sci-tech powerhouse. “We’ve changed our focus from the enterprises in the cluster to the people who work in those organizations,” said Yu Jun, Party secretary of Haidian, noting that the district is seeking a new urban form that supports innovation, a high-quality city in itself. Haidian has been exploring more and digging deeper into urban functions as well as thoughtful and satisfying services for the people. Haidian is one of the first districts in Beijing to roll out free WiFi hotspots covering all public service areas. In today’s 5G era, the district now seeks to turn people’s commute into a “workplace,” creating a space for researchers and developers to not only capture their ideas when they spark but share them in realtime. A walking path has been built to link Tsinghua University with its surrounding offices, as well as a 6.5-km-long bike lane that connects the concentrated residential community of Huilongguan to the Zhongguancun Software Park in Shangdi’s information industry base. “Through these initial attempts, we’re trying to create a stress-free environment for research staff so that they can focus on their innovative research,” Yu said. Established in 1988 with clusters of universities, tech firms and research institutes, Zhongguancun was the first national high-tech industrial development zone. It strengthened its role as an innovation incubator after the State Council approved that it would be built into a national scientific and technological innovation center with global influence in 2009. The overall revenue of new high-tech companies in the Zhongguancun Haidian Science Park rose by more than 10 percent year on year in 2019 to reach 2.6 trillion yuan (about 377.8 billion U.S. dollars), according to the recently delivered government work report of the district. – The Daily Mail-Global Times News exchange item
