City planners may find ideas to relieve the headache of urban issues at the Shanghai Expo's Urban Best Practices Area.

One of the solutions is to build an eco-friendly city.

LOW-CARBON CITY LIFE

Almost all the cities face the pressures of population growth, resource strain, climate change, and environmental pollution.

The UBPA features some 70 cities from across the world showcasing solutions to urban issues. It has been acclaimed as innovative for World Expo history.

Germany's Freiburg is a low-carbon exhibitor in the UBPA area. The city provides a good example in using low-carbon and clean models in the future.

Freiburg enjoys a reputation of being a "green city" thanks to its sustainable city development, reasonable ecological protection strategies and effective use of renewable energy.

"Freiburg especially boasts its capacity in exploring and using of the solar energy," said Chen Lian, director of the Freiburg exhibition.

Curitiba, Brazil, also chose an eco-friendly city development path. The city is famous for its effective use of public transportation.

Unlike most Brazilian cities that are dependent on cars, two thirds of the 1.7 million residents in Curitiba use buses as their means of transportation.

The city's public transportation system needs no government allowance and the fuel oil consumption only accounts for 25 percent of other similar-scale cities. Traffic jams are rare.

The world recognized eco-friendly cities also include Berkley in the United States, Kitakyushu in Japan, Adelaide in Australia and Malmo in Sweden.

"The aim of building the eco-friendly city is to effectively use and protect the natural resources of the city, so that human and nature can coexist well," said Huang Guangyu, China's city planning expert.