The State Council has approved the urban plan (2011-20) for Tai’an, a tourist and historic city in East China’s Shandong province.

The plan urges coordinated urban and rural development in the designated area of 2,087 square kilometers, with infrastructure and public service made available to surrounding villages.

More efforts will be concentrated on counties with good basic conditions, and the layout of counties and villages will be improved.

The scale of the city should be controlled. The downtown population should be capped at 1.35 million by 2020 and construction land should limited to within 150 square kilometers.

Meanwhile, the plan also called for intensive use of land and underground urban space with measures implemented to protect arable land.

No new development zones or city districts should be set up beyond approved areas, the plan stated.

The local government is also required to improve low carbon and green infrastructure. Roads and railways should be further optimized to build a public traffic-based and diversified urban transportation system.

The plan also urged comprehensive planning on infrastructure of water supply, garbage disposal and disaster prevention.

To build a resource-saving and people-friendly city, the local government was asked to control pollutants, speed up overcapacity retirement and support green buildings.

While placing strict management on water resources and harmless waste treatment, more work should be done to build a sponge city and protect ecological areas, especially Mount Tai, wetlands and water sources.

The local government is also asked to make coordinated arrangements for service infrastructure closely related to public interests, such as education, healthcare and municipal administration, with a special focus on affordable housing projects.

In addition, efforts should be made to protect historic sites and cultural heritage to realize coordinated development of historic culture and modern civilization, the plan stated.