(by Professor Zheng Changzhong on the Way from the Hotel to Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City Urban Planning Pavilion on May 26, 2025)
Good morning, everyone!
On the last day of our tour, thank you all for your full engagement along the way! This morning, we will visit the Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City Urban Planning Pavilion. As the core display window of Hangzhou’s West Innovation Corridor, it is a digital practice hall gathering cutting-edge technologies, centrally showcasing the smart blueprint and innovative achievements of the core area of the “First City of Digital Economy.” I believe this visit will give you a more intuitive understanding of the development trends in future urban construction. Before the on-site visit, let me first outline the underlying logic and technological applications of urban digital transformation.
In recent years, the wave of digital technology in China has been reshaping the social fabric in a disruptive manner. From economic models to governance structures, from cultural ecosystems to public services, digital technology has broken through traditional application boundaries and become the core engine driving national development and urban transformation. Since Shanghai issued the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting Urban Digital Transformation in 2021, Zhejiang Province followed with the Implementation Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting Urban Digital Transformation in Zhejiang Province in 2022, and key cities like Beijing have subsequently launched similar initiatives, triggering a nationwide urban innovation movement.
So, how does urban digital transformation proceed? This is not simply a superimposition of technologies but a systematic and revolutionary urban reconstruction. It requires breaking free from the traditional urban development mindset and building a new system adapted to the digital era, from underlying architectures to top-level applications. Its core lies in enabling cities with “perceptive, thoughtful, decision-making, and executive” smart capabilities through technological empowerment, ultimately achieving efficient operations, precise governance, and humanized services.
The underlying logic of urban digital transformation is akin to building a “new infrastructure city” for the digital age. First, a solid digital foundation must be constructed—through new infrastructure like 5G networks, intelligent sensing devices, laying a fully interconnected digital nervous system for the city. Just as traditional cities need transportation networks and utility pipelines, the digital foundation is the new lifeline supporting smart urban operations.
On this basis, the digital middle platform becomes the “central nervous system” of urban intelligence. It is important to note that the “City Brain” is a concrete application of the digital middle platform in urban governance. Take Hangzhou’s “City Brain” as an example: this ultra-large digital hub, akin to the city’s intelligent heart, has now been upgraded to the latest version, covering dozens of application scenarios such as transportation, emergency response, and cultural tourism, processing billions of data daily. Through deep AI algorithm calculations, it can optimize resource allocation in millisecond-level responses—dynamically adjusting traffic light durations during peak hours and providing intelligent guidance for parking space availability. Public data shows that after implementing the City Brain, Hangzhou’s traffic congestion index has significantly decreased, and urban operational efficiency has seen exponential growth.
Above the digital middle platform, various application scenarios have sprung up like mushrooms. In healthcare, the full-process digitization of “cloud clinics + electronic prescriptions + medicine delivery” has completely addressed the pain point of “five hours of waiting for a five-minute consultation.” In government services, Shanghai’s “Sui Shen Ban” APP integrates thousands of affairs for fingertip processing. In urban governance, relying on the “One Network for Integrated Management” platform, automatic early warnings of safety hazards and immediate handling of environmental issues have been achieved. These innovative practices are driving cities from the mechanical operations of the industrial era to the intelligent collaboration of the digital era.
It is worth mentioning that the planning pavilion features a “Future Community Digital Twin Model” and an “AI Urban Governance Simulation System,” where we will visually observe how the science and technology city achieves smart traffic, smart security, and other scenarios through data-driven approaches. The digital middle platform is like the city’s “smart heart,” while various application scenarios are the “nerve endings” extending to every corner of the city, together forming the complete vein of digital transformation.
As cutting-edge technologies such as digital twins and the metaverse accelerate their implementation, future cities will present a more imaginative landscape of transformation.
We are approaching the Hangzhou Future Science and Technology City Urban Planning Pavilion, and next, we will conduct an on-site visit!
*The views and opinions expressed in the articles are solely those of the individual authors and do not reflect the position of the Secretariat of the Belt and Road Journalist Network.