Positioning Landscape Architecture in a Global Context: Review on Critical Landscape Planning During the Belt and Road Initiative

Abstract

Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu’s recent publication Critical Landscape Planning During the Belt and Road Initiative emerges from their Landscape Architecture course on ecological planning at the University of Hong Kong lasted for several years. The book studies the landscape transformation along the China-Laos Railway, one of the earliest Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects. Targeted towards the audience of planners and allied professionals working in regional and transnational projects, the authors provide a comprehensive discussion on histories, planning pedagogies, and conceptual frameworks of global developments. Demonstrated through a series of studio proposals, the book can be seen as a provocative and ambitious experiment, in which Kelly and Lu challenge conventional epistemologies and protocols in landscape architecture research and professional practices. The review focuses on the authors’ conceptual and methodological frameworks to explore “critical landscape planning” as both pedagogical and practical practices. Additionally, this review invites critical reflections on the positionality of the landscape architecture discipline.

Keywords

Critical Landscape Planning / Landscape Architecture Pedagogy / Positionality / The Belt and Road Initiative / Book Review

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2023 Higher Education Press