The Eco-Knowledge City Theory and its Practice in Shenzhen of China

2.1. The Theory of Ecology City

The concept of eco-city was firstly introduced in the 1970 s, together with the study “human and biosphere” by UNESCO which put forward five principles of eco-city, becoming the foundation of the development of the eco-city theory. The Soviet scholar Yanitsky (1984) thinks ecological city is a kind of ideal city model, which technology and nature fully mix together; creativity and productivity gets the maximum protection; material, energy and information is fully used, and ecology is in a virtuous cycle. The United States ecologist Rechester (1987) thinks that an ecological city is a settlement which is compact and full of energy, and contains harmonious coexistence of energy-saving and nature. Huang and Yuan (2001) think that an ecological city is a sustainable subsystem of the global regional ecological system. It is a compound system including harmonious nature, fair society, and effective economy, and is constructed based on the ecology principle. In 2002, the fifth International Ecological-City Conference held in Shenzhen, China, passed the Shenzhen Declaration on Eco-city Construction, and proposed that the construction of eco-city should be carried out from five dimensions, including eco-safety, eco-health, eco-industry metabolism, improvement of ecological landscape, and cultivation of ecological cultural awareness.