Hunnu City Master Plan by Bechu & Associés Aligns with Mongolia’s Vision 2050
Hunnu City master plan establishes a long term urban framework for a 31,503 hectare satellite city south of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, developed in response to national decentralization goals under Vision 2050. Selected through an international design competition, the proposal envisions phased construction from 2025 to 2045, integrating cultural references and ecological resilience into its spatial logic.
Design Concept
The project rejects centralized urban models in favor of a constellation of adaptable urban cells, inspired by the traditional Mongolian ger and natural systems like wind and solar paths. Circular hubs named Amid Od serve as multifunctional anchors for community life, blending architectural design with social infrastructure. This decentralized approach aligns with emerging global strategies for climate-responsive cities, emphasizing modularity over monumentality.
Materials & Construction
While material specifications remain undeclared, the plan prioritizes climate-adaptive construction capable of withstanding Mongolia’s extreme winters and arid summers. Techniques will likely draw from innovations in building materials that support thermal efficiency and rapid assembly. Phased implementation allows the construction process to evolve alongside demographic and economic shifts, reducing upfront resource strain.
Sustainability
Water capture, renewable energy integration, and biodiversity corridors form the ecological backbone of the Hunnu City master plan. These measures reflect core principles of global sustainability discourse, particularly in contexts where urban expansion threatens fragile steppe ecosystems. The design’s ecological corridors aim to maintain landscape continuity a strategy documented in ArchUp’s archive of arid-region planning projects.
Urban Impact
Hunnu City lies 52 kilometers south of Ulaanbaatar, near Chinggis Khaan International Airport. It aims to ease pressure on the capital, where more than half of Mongolia’s population lives. The Hunnu City master plan decentralizes housing, jobs, and services to address overloaded infrastructure. It also tests new models of satellite urbanism. These efforts feed into broader urban research on polycentric development in resource-constrained environments.
Will the Hunnu City master plan’s regenerative vision withstand the complexities of real world implementation, or will logistical and financial constraints dilute its ecological ambitions?
Architectural Snapshot: Hunnu City’s master plan organizes a 31,503 hectare satellite settlement into ger inspired urban cells centered on multifunctional “stars of life” hubs.
✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight
The Hunnu City master plan offers a technically ambitious response to Mongolia’s urban concentration crisis. It frames decentralization through regenerative landscape logic and cultural symbolism. Yet it relies heavily on idealized nomadic metaphors. This risks turning complex socio ecological realities into aesthetic gestures. The proposal lacks concrete implementation safeguards, leaving its climate resilience claims untested. Still, it avoids the monumental hubris common in satellite city projects a notable restraint. Its phased, cell-based growth presents a plausible model for arid regions. Whether this framework endures as a planning tool or fades into administrative inertia depends more on governance than on geometry.
