On August 5, 2026, UNESCO officially designated Beijing as the UNESCO-UIA World Capital of Architecture 2029. Centered on the theme “Restoring Balance”, this paper draws on Beijing"s historic built heritage, urban-planning policies and meteorological‑technology practices to outline pathways for Beijing to build a resilient city against climate change from three dimensions: indigenous construction wisdom, top‑level institutional design, and cross‑sector technological empowerment.

It shares replicable Chinese approaches to urban governance with the world.

Indigenous Wisdom for Climate Adaptation and Disaster Mitigation

With over 870 years as an imperial capital, Beijing has accumulated valuable experience in disaster mitigation through centuries-long urban construction. Guided by the core principles of infiltration, retention and drainage, its ancient architecture represents an early prototype of the modern “sponge city”, embodying a construction philosophy of balanced human-nature coexistence.

The Forbidden City stands as a landmark example of ancient stormwater management. Its three main halls sit atop three‑tiered Sumeru‑style stone bases engineered with scientifically calculated drainage gradients. A total of 1142 hollow white‑marble dragon‑head spouts connect to internal drainage ditches. During heavy rainfalls, the spectacular “Water Spouting from Thousand Dragons” takes place, enabling efficient flood discharge while preventing foundation erosion. Rainwater flows through a branched underground culvert network and empties into the Inner Golden Water River. This system links individual buildings with the imperial capital’s water network and the Ming‑Qing drainage relics along the Central Axis, preserving Beijing’s 800‑year‑old water‑management legacy.

Beihai Park and the Round City serves as a living testament to ancient rainwater regulation. Built in the Yongle reign of the Ming Dynasty, it adopts inverted‑trapezoid blue‑brick paving combined with shafts and underground culverts to form an integrated system for rainwater collection, drainage and infiltration. This achieves optimal hydrological performance: ground stays damp without surface ponding, and soil retains moisture even during droughts. Additional traditional designs deliver multi‑functional benefits: Jingshan Hill mitigates wind impact, the Central Axis supports ecological regulation, courtyard layouts facing south enhance ventilation and thermal insulation, and mortise-and-tenon brackets absorb seismic shocks. Today, modern tools including lightning monitoring and meteorological risk assessment support heritage conservation along the Central Axis, revitalising age-old climate-adaptive wisdom for contemporary use.

Schematic Diagram of Ventilation Corridors in Central Beijing (Source: Beijing Master Plan (2016‑2035))

Building Climate Resilience: A Governance Model for Megacities

Beijing advances sustainable urban development through institutional governance. Climate adaptation, disaster risk mitigation and low‑carbon transition are embedded as mandatory requirements for urban renewal.

At city‑wide scale, Beijing promotes sponge-city initiatives, ventilation corridors and green‑space systems to mitigate urban heat‑island effects and improve stormwater retention capacity. The Beijing Sub‑center widely deploys ultra‑low‑energy and nearly‑zero‑energy green buildings. Historic hutong neighbourhoods undergo micro‑renewal: drainage systems and emergency shelters are upgraded while preserving cultural features, reconciling heritage conservation with climate security.

Meteorological expertise is fully integrated into territorial spatial planning. Upholding the philosophy of respecting, conforming to and protecting nature, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau collaborates with urban‑planning authorities. It combines building aerodynamic characteristics, heat‑island distribution, high‑resolution underlying‑surface datasets and building‑related data to formulate ventilation‑corridor plans for central urban areas.

To address urban pluvial flooding, multiple departments jointly evaluate and revise regional storm‑intensity formulas. Such locally tailored technical outputs underpin sponge‑city retrofits and flood mitigation. Beijing has received international recognition from the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, offering valuable experience for global megacities balancing heritage preservation and sustainable development.

Annual Precipitation Variation, 1981‑2025, Beijing (Source: Beijing Municipal Climate Centre)

Advancing Technology‑driven Empowerment

Beijing fosters interdisciplinary collaboration between climate science and urban-rural construction. It has built a complete technical workflow: meteorological monitoring and assessment → optimisation of building schemes → city‑wide risk prevention and control. Digital meteorological technologies enhance the climate carrying capacity of urban buildings.

FENGYUN (FY) series meteorological satellites deliver remote‑sensing observations on urban heat-island and rain-island dynamics. The quantitative data supports ventilation‑corridor delineation, buildinglayout optimisation and heat‑wave response. Wind tunnel testing, AI‑driven meteorological simulation and extreme‑condition load calculation are widely adopted in architectural design. Meteorological big‑data has optimised wind resistance, snow‑load tolerance, thermal insulation and drainage performance for prefabricated mountain venues built for the Winter Olympics and large‑scale public facilities.

The Beijing Municipal Climate Centre has established a multi‑scale evaluation framework and numerical‑simulation system covering the central city, neighbourhood and individual building levels. It assesses benefits of blue‑green infrastructure, resilient spatial planning and neighbourhood‑scale climate risks. High-risk zones are identified using granular territorial‑spatial, building‑exposure and vulnerability datasets. Climate considerations run through the full planning‑construction cycle, supporting technical standards for territorial spatial planning and metropolitan climate-risk assessment, and facilitating climate-resilient urban development.

Through the international platform of World Capital of Architecture 2029, Beijing will further share its ancient climate-responsive construction wisdom, megacity resilience‑planning experience and meteorology‑enabled urban‑development solutions. It contributes Chinese insights for global climate‑change adaptation and improved urban disaster‑risk reduction capacity.

Special thanks to Beijing Municipal Meteorological Service and Beijing Climate Centre

Planner/Editor: LIU Shuqiao