An aerial photo of the Mingyue Lake Sci-Tech Ecological Park [Photo/Visual Chongqing]

Liangjiang New Area in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality has built 131 parks, allowing the majority of its residents' access to a park within a five-minute walk.

One example is a garbage-sorting park that opened to the public recently as the first of its kind in Southwest China. Residents can learn about garbage sorting through holographic projections, virtual reality, multi-media exhibition walls, and other interactive technologies.

As Chongqing's first "sponge park", the Yuelai Exhibition Park has used eco-friendly permeable bricks and grass swales to replace traditional bricks and pipes, making it easier to store water. The park also features a large number of aquatic plants and reportedly manages to preserve, purify and utilize rainwater over an area of 500,000 square meters.

Liangjiang will further invest 6 billion yuan ($941.4 million) in the building of an additional 70 parks in the future, and seeks to connect these parks via greenways.