Recently, the Hunan Provincial Department of Finance, the Hunan Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Hunan Provincial Department of Water Resources issued a notice on deciding to carry out a provincial-level systematic demonstration application for promoting the construction of sponge cities in cities divided into county-level cities across the province. The move aims to create conditions for building livable, green, resilient, smart, and cultural cities and promote the province's sponge city construction to a new level.

Hunan Province will identify two prefecture-level cities and two county-level cities as provincial-level sponge city construction demonstration cities through competitive selection. The provincial finance authority will provide fixed subsidies to the demonstration cities. The total subsidy for prefecture-level cities is 50 million yuan, and that for county-level cities is 40 million yuan. The financial resources of the applicants should meet the investment needs for sponge city construction, and there will be no new hidden government debts in this regard. Cities that have received financial support from the central and provincial governments for sponge city construction are not allowed to apply again. The two shortlisted prefecture-level cities are recommended to apply for this year's national models for sponge city construction.

The sponge city construction program is an important measure to fully implement the concept of green development, improve urban functions, enhance urban comprehensive carrying capacity, and promote ecological civilization. In recent years, Hunan Province has developed a number of replicable and scalable sponge city construction demonstration projects. In 2015, Changde City was among the first batch of pilot cities for sponge city construction in China. In 2016, Yueyang City, Changde’s Jinshi City, Changsha’s Wangcheng District and Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture’s Fenghuang County were approved as pilot provincial cities for sponge city construction during the 13th Five-year Plan period. In 2021, Yueyang City was identified as the first batch of China’s 20 demonstration cities to systematically promote sponge city construction during the 14th Five-year Plan period, and will receive 1 billion yuan of central financial aid in three years.

This article is from the Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Xiao Juan
 
Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn