Central Park

The Suzhou Industrial Park is is planned city.  Twenty years ago, it didn't exist.  The city planners laid out the infrastructure of roads and utilities first.  Then the businesses and the residences followed in strictly choreographed construction projects.

 I've been told that this is fairly common in China.  Since the opening of the economy in the 1980s, hundreds of cities have been expanded or built out of whole cloth.  You see, China was (and still is) a predominantly rural country.  It's like the U.S. or Europe in the 1940s.  Urbanization is one of the top goals of the government.  By attracting the poor workers to the cities from the countryside, they can kill two birds with one stone.   The first bird is that urbanization creates concentrated pools of low-cost labor to attract foreign investment...and foreign investment generates tax income.  The second bird is that it is much easier for the government to provide social benefits such as medical care, housing assistance, and transportation to a dense, centralized population. 

 Anyway, like I said before, Suzhou Industrial Park is a planned city.  But the local folks all say that it an exceptional planned city because the city planners have stuck to the plan.  Most cities, they say, suffer because the bureaucrats responsible for the city plan turn over every few years or so.  When new ones come in, they all make changes to improve it.  Each change is a deviation from the original master plan and before long the city becomes a confused jumble.  SIP, however, has stubbornly stuck to it's original master plan.  There is logic to the organization of industrial and residential and public spaces.

You've seen those high-end subdivisions where the developer comes in and builds a nice little community of houses and a playground and a golf course and a shopping area?  Suzhou Industrial Park is like that.  Only it's bigger.   A lot bigger. 

One of the nice things that the city planners did was to carve out a few acres for Central Park.  Central Park is about halfway between the Old City of Suzhou and the recreation spaces on JinJi Lake.  It is an island of trees and water and bamboo groves and flower gardens in an ocean of concrete and asphalt. 

Above are a few photos of Central Park.   There is a bus stop to the North of the park and another to the South of the park.   Let me know if you need the numbers of the buses which visit there.