Guangzhou 2012 Urban Construction Work Conference was held on the morning of February 7, at which Chen Jianhua, mayor of Guangzhou, said tasks of urban construction are heavy for Guangzhou this year and key tasks must be stressed to ensure the annual target is fulfilled as scheduled. He enumerated several key tasks, including major strategic infrastructure construction, eco-city building, shoreline landscape construction, and wetland building.

Priority should be given to solving transport problems in Tongdewei and Jinshazhou and removing traffic congestion at 27 locations in this year's urban construction, Chen added.

Key Tasks of Urban Construction in 2012

Stressing major strategic infrastructure construction concerning Guangzhou's long-term development, and carrying out urban and rural construction to address both symptoms and root causes.

· Stressing eco-city building featuring flower city, green city and water city, and intensively carrying out pilot eco-city building by following steps of "preemptive pilot practice in a year, full unfolding in three years and initial shaping in five years". All districts and county-level cities should create new landscape highlights displaying the outlook of the "flower city" in accordance with high standards.

· Integrating water treatment with lake building, and landscape creation with housing construction, to build the landscapes along the Pearl River, the Zengjiang River, the Liuxi River and the coastline.

· Building urban wetlands based on existing superior resources of the 10,000-mu orchards in Haizhu District, such as orchards, forests, lakes, streams, rivers and towns.

· Combining elements such as mountains, waters, forests and springs and bringing alive pavilions, terraces, towers, corridors and boats to enhance the city grade.

· Stressing major livelihood infrastructure construction concerning the immediate interest of the people, valuing citizen wellbeing as the highest pursuit of urban construction, and taking people's satisfaction as the criterion for project evaluation, construction and acceptance.

· Intensifying evaluation of urban construction projects, and intensively investing limited construction funds in the projects that best meet people's needs, in order of priority and based on radiation capacity.