laixi is making efforts to build the city into amodern ecologic medium-sized city which highlights the harmonious developmentamong human beings, city and nature and features local characteristics with theecologic landscape of “rivers and hills integrated with the city, ecologicwoods linked with the city, rivers and roads afforest the city and parks andplazas dotted with the city”, and “the city surrounded by green water and lakesand the city, lakes and rivers integrated together”. by the end of 2016, the planning area of laixi reached to 539 square kilometers with the built up area of 34.3 square kilometers. the urbanization level reached 61.5%; the urban green coverage rate reached 45.54% and urban sewage centralized processing rate reached 99%. urban construction projects andprojects related to tourism include yuehu park, daqingshan forest park,cuizifanartgallery,yuehuplaza,peopleplaza,meihuashanecologicparkandzhuhepark.the city has fully carried out the development oflaixilakeproject and established “watercityinnorthern china”, which has been integratedinto qingdao tourism framework, the greater peninsula and south korean andjapanese tourism circles. the city has gradually become the emerging travelcity featuring ecologic tourism and leisure holiday.
in september 12, 2015, the qingdao 2015 world leisure sports meeting was held in laixi. 16000 athletes of 92 countries and regions from 6 continents attended the official tournament of the meeting.about 380000 tourists came to the meeting, which was fully beyond scale and benefit of the first meeting. laixi was evaluated as model city for sports event and “rural, ecological and leisure laixi” by the world leisure organization, which increased the popularity and reputation of laixi. the urban cohesion and influence were also significantly enhanced.after effect of leisure sports meeting was fully exerted. from august to october, 2016, laixi held a series leisure activities to celebrates the first anniversary of qingdao 2015 world leisure sports meeting, including one media preview (on september 2, the first anniversary of qingdao 2015 world leisure sports meeting and the press conference of a series of leisure activities were held in qingdao sanfod hotel), one memorial party (on september 21, 2015, the memorial party of the first anniversary of qingdao 2015 world leisure sports meeting was held in laixi people's square), a batch of forum activities (on august 16, shandong peninsula city association for regional cooperation of tourism leisure tourism forum and first china • jiaodong 2016 logistics development forum were held in laixi, qingdao), a group of mass recreational and sports activities (square dancing competition, yangko competition, cadres leisure sports, football league matches, dagu river vigorous walking and qingdao tai chi exchange activities) and a batch of centralized display activities (qingdao 2015 world leisure sports meeting wonderful retrospective, the first laixi travel photography competition, yowin cup photography competition and suzhou five people painting and calligraphy exhibition and other activities).