Beijing to build air corridors to blow away pollution

A man wearing mask at Tian'anmen square in Beijing on Wednesday. [Photo/CFP]

In its latest effort to tackle air pollution, Beijing plans to channel wind through streets to blow away the dirty air, reported the Beijing News on Friday.

The six wind corridors proposed would allow air from the suburbs to blow through the urban center and, hopefully, remove the air pollutants, said an insider from the Beijing Municipal Institute of City Planning and Design.

The institute is studying the viability of building the wind passages and will publish the result by the end of this year, said the insider.

To disperse polluted air, the institute also proposed to control the height and density of buildings.

Beijing is not the first Chinese city considering this method to tackle its air pollution problem. Other cities, including Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Wuhan, have also considered it.

Not all agree with this method.

Song Guojun, a professor of environmental studies at Renmin University, believes that building wind passages will not solve the air quality problem at its root, and only by controlling the source of pollution will Beijing see bluer skies.