Yangzhou's Urban Restoration and Ecological Revitalization initiative rebuilt polluted rivers, landfills and industrial brownfields into a connected network of wetlands, parks and cultural spaces. By integrating ecological, economic and governance strategies to restore nature, the initiative created healthy public spaces, strengthened the local economy and renewed residents’ connection to the city's waterways.
By 2015, nearly 18% of Yangzhou's water bodies were too polluted for human use or aquatic life, and only 53% met basic ecological standards. At the same time, degraded and fenced-off industrial waterfronts deprived low-income households, older adults and car-free residents of acess to green spaces and daily mobility. Decades of industrial expansion transformed a historic water city — built at the confluence of the Yangtze River and Grand Canal — into a place increasingly disconnected from its waterways, natural systems and cultural identity.
- Selected five ecologically-fragile and culturally-significant sites — Huaduhui, Sanwan, Qihe-Badao, Sanhe-Liu'an and Sanjiangying — as pilot zones, concentrating investment where restoration could deliver the most environmental, economic and cultural returns
- Applied nature-based restoration techniques to former landfills and brownfields, including wetland recovery, shoreline softening, water purification and soil remediation, to former landfills and brownfields
- Converted restored sites into multifunctional public spaces, including gardens, markets, museums and walkways
- Formed a city-level, cross-agency task force spanning environmental, planning, water and housing departments
- Ran a three-stage public engagement process — 1) pre-engagement, 2) on-site visits and 3) post-completion co-management — to build community ownership
- Combined public funding across municipal, provincial and central governments with private capital, creating a financing model durable enough to sustain a decade-long, multibillion-dollar program
- Codified restoration methods, including eco-shorelines, soil remediation and aquatic planting, into formal city guidelines and the 14th Five-Year Plan
- Embedded ecological content into school curricula and organized resident-led patrols, cleanups and eco-events, extending the project's impact from physical spaces into education and civic participation
- Raised high-quality water segments from 53.2% to over 95% between 2015 and 2023
- Increased Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) by 56.1% (¥240.2B to ¥374.8B), demonstrating that ecological restoration translates into measurable economic value
- Reached 500,000 direct beneficiaries within 5 kilometers of restoration sites and drew more than 100 million visitors in 2023 alone, turning former industrial land into some of the city's most-used public spaces
- Created 5,600 jobs in tourism, hospitality and horticulture, many going to women, young people and retrained former factory workers
- Raised "good” air quality days in Yangzhou from 245 to 275 annually
- Increased forest cover by 3.57 square kilometers across restoration sites
- Prompted formal replication in Suzhou and Changzhou
- Earned international recognition through UNEP's "Generation Restoration" program, extending Yangzhou's model from a local pilot to a cited reference for eco-cultural urban renewal across the Yangtze River Delta and beyond
- Successfully encouraged Yangzhou to incorporate lessons learned (e.g., the biggest gains were concentrated in high-income areas) into the city’s 2022-2025 Child-Friendly Action Plan, helping the city develop more targeted strategies to distribute benefits equitably across communities
