1 Introduction
The urban built environment is in a continual state of evolution. Around 1999, a small urban green space was created along a street when a major urban road was widened. In early autumn 2007, while conducting fieldwork on urban streets with students, I observed that this green space was enclosed by a ring of metal railings. I suggested to the students that the railings were unnecessary. Given its location, the needs of the surrounding community, and the size of the site, the space was well suited to conversion into a neighborhood park. The students looked perplexed. One remarked, "Isn't having trees and a lawn good enough?"
Influenced by my widely discussed 2018 speech, "A Human Habitat That 'Makes Enemies' of People,"① Beijing launched an initiative to remove unnecessary railings. This green space was opened up in 2019.
① This speech can be accessed via the official website of YiXi Talk.
Several months ago, I passed the site again and found it enclosed by construction hoardings. Curious about the work underway, I climbed onto a nearby pedestrian overpass and saw that a path was being constructed through the green space. Three steps had been built at each end of the path, with no apparent provision for an accessible ramp. This design was evidently inconsistent with the relevant design standards and laws. After some effort, I contacted the project's design and construction teams and arranged an on-site discussion. The project team explained that three steps had been deliberately incorporated to prevent electric bicycles from riding through the space; an accessible ramp had not been considered. During the site visit, I also discovered that the project appeared to involve nothing more than constructing a path. After confirming that no seating was planned, I began to question such designing. The project team responded that "seating would encourage people to linger, creating management troubles." I pressed the point: given the substantial need for outdoor rest and social interaction among people living or working around this space, why construct a path while discouraging people from using it? The response was that, following the removal of the railings, people entered the green space and caused patches of grass bare.
Against the backdrop of economic development and market transformation, Landscape Architecture—and, indeed, Architecture and Urban and Rural Planning, the other two disciplines commonly regarded as the three pillars of the built-environment professions ("planning and design professions" hereafter)—faces a severe contraction in professional demands. Yet the phenomena I have observed, namely, the inability to deliver satisfactory work and the failure to approach professional tasks with due diligence, are widespread across different regions. One particularly troubling question is why firms that secure project commissions do not strive to deliver outcomes that exceed the minimum requirements of design standards, surpass market expectations, and meet higher standards of professional practice that they set for themselves.
With the implementation of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Building Accessible Environments
[1] and the Ecological and Environmental Code of the People's Republic of China
[2] (hereafter, the Building Accessible Environments Law and the Ecological and Environmental Code, respectively, or collectively, "the two laws"), establishing a new consensus on quality within the planning and design professions has become an urgent priority. Professional quality is both a product of disciplinary consensus and an objective to be pursued. Whether the professions can respond to the expectations of the state and the public depends on their ability to reach a shared understanding of fundamental issues, including statutory responsibilities, professional ethics, institutional arrangements, education, and market mechanisms.
2 The Two Laws Impose Unprecedented Statutory Responsibilities on the Planning and Design Professions and Education
As China's first dedicated legislation on the construction of accessible environments, the Building Accessible Environments Law, which took effect on September 1, 2023, establishes a mandatory requirement that "the accessible facilities shall be planned, designed, constructed, inspected for acceptance, and delivered for use simultaneously with the main structure, and be effectively connected and integrated with the accessible facilities in the proximity." The law also explicitly requires accessibility-related knowledge to be incorporated into the curricula of relevant disciplines and into professional qualification assessments. The Ecological and Environmental Code, which took effect on August 15, 2026, establishes a systematic framework comprising five parts: General Provisions, Pollution Prevention and Control, Ecological Conservation, Green and Low-Carbon Development, and Legal Liability and Supplementary Provisions. It stipulates that "an ecological and environmental impact assessment shall be conducted in accordance with law when formulating a development and utilization plan or undertaking a project with ecological and environmental impact; any development and utilization plan that has not undergone ecological and environmental impact assessment in accordance with law shall not be organized or implemented." It also advocates green and low-carbon planning and design concepts and advances the development of green, low-carbon, and climate-adaptive cities. Together, the two laws—one centered on people and the other on land and the environment—address the same fundamental question: what social responsibilities should planning and design assume? In doing so, they establish a minimum threshold for professional quality in the planning and design professions.
3 Proactively Fulfilling Statutory Responsibilities
The first principle of consensus in planning and design is to regard legal requirements as fundamental professional responsibilities
[3]. In the main texts of the two laws, the terms corresponding to "shall" (mandatory obligations) and "must not" (prohibitions) appear 66 and 1 time(s), respectively, in the Building Accessible Environments Law, and 1, 947 and 792 times, respectively, in the Ecological and Environmental Code. The two terms together account for 1.9% and 3.4% of the total word counts of the two laws, respectively. Today, professional quality is reflected in an understanding of statutory responsibilities and the values underpinning them, as well as in the ability to develop solutions to human and land-related problems that demonstrably satisfy statutory duties and applicable design standards. The Building Accessible Environments Law elevates accessibility from a matter of professional advocacy to a binding institutional obligation: a design firm's failure to comply with applicable design standards constitutes a violation of the law. The Ecological and Environmental Code establishes ecological and environmental impact assessment as a prerequisite that planning and development projects cannot bypass, while making green and low-carbon development a legislative objective and fundamental principle. Its Fourth Part, "Green and Low-Carbon Development, " is devoted exclusively to this subject. Planning and design are thus no longer merely professional activities; they are explicitly recognized as statutory responsibilities carrying obligations to the public.
4 Rebuilding Professional Education on a Foundation of National Needs and Global Perspectives
The second principle of consensus is that education in planning and design must adopt a global perspective, engage with real-world challenges, respond to national and human needs, and reorient teaching and learning toward their fundamental educational purpose
[4]. Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has increasingly assumed the responsibilities of a major country with a growing global role. The enactment of the two laws reflects this development and, at the same time, establishes higher expectations for the planning and design professions and education. Beyond compliance with these two laws, professional education in planning and design must cultivate the capacity to investigate uncertainties in the human environment and develop adaptive solutions. These uncertainties arise from climate change, the biodiversity crisis, land-system degradation, the pervasive spread of environmental pollution, the deterioration of marine environments, and mounting pressures on freshwater resources, together with many secondary environmental and resource-related challenges associated with these issues. Such challenges occur across the globe and increasingly threaten human survival and security. Exploring solutions to the shared yet highly differentiated challenges facing humanity is an unequivocal responsibility of both the professions and their educational institutions.
5 Advancing Professional Qualification Systems Through Market-Oriented Reform
The third principle of consensus is that improving professional quality requires the establishment and refinement of effective market mechanisms. Market forces offer one of the most direct and effective means of driving continuous improvements in professional standards. Only when practitioners recognize that failure to respond to societal needs, pursue innovation, comply with design standards, or uphold professional integrity may result in their exclusion from the market can the professions move toward a sound and sustainable trajectory and develop a robust professional ethos. The establishment of systems for professional entry and qualification assessment has long been a goal of the landscape planning and design professions. The implementation of the two laws provides a compelling and firmly grounded justification for this objective. Designers should be authorized to sign planning and design documents and assume the corresponding responsibilities only when they possess the professional competence required to fulfill their statutory duties and explicitly accept the associated professional accountability. Legal requirements, market mechanisms, and professional qualification and entry systems must function as an integrated framework; none can be dispensed with.
6 Upholding the Minimum Standards of Professional Ethics
The fourth principle of consensus is that the professions must establish clear and enforceable ethical standards. The two laws incorporate the development of inclusive, accessible environments, ecological conservation and restoration, and green and low-carbon development into the responsibilities of planning and design. The professions must therefore be capable of safeguarding the rights and interests of users of public and everyday environments, including their life safety, dignity, and physical and mental well-being, while also fulfilling their responsibilities for sustaining the land and the long-term viability of human societies. Professional quality in planning and design must now be understood as the outcome of a systematic process grounded in legal requirements, professional knowledge and skills, professional education, and evidence-based solutions. These are not merely matters of knowledge application and technical proficiency; they also concern the maintenance of fundamental professional standards—that is, professional ethics. Only by upholding these ethical standards can the professions achieve professionalization and high-quality development and earn public trust. Solutions to problems involving land and the environment cannot be reduced to a collection of equally valid opinions, much less to self-referential judgments unsupported by external scrutiny. Designers and professional organizations must develop effective mechanisms for professional self-regulation and establish clear rules for self-governance. These mechanisms are essential to the continuous improvement of general professional competence and demonstrated professional competency, thereby safeguarding the sustained quality of professional practice
[3].
7 The Widespread Adoption of Artificial Intelligence Creates Unprecedented External Conditions and Opportunities for High-Quality Development in the Professions
The division of labor is a major driver of social and civilizational progress. The widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has created unprecedented opportunities for finer-grained specialization, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the practical application of knowledge and technology, as well as for innovation and creative problem-solving. AI offers extraordinary advantages for revitalizing the planning and design professions while maintaining high standards of quality. However, realizing AI's potential depends on a fundamental prerequisite: recognizing that the planning and design professions serve countless individual living beings and that every planning or design project is a unique case. The significance of these individuals and cases for planning and design lies in four interrelated characteristics: 1) the rich details through which differences in land and human life are expressed; 2) the infinite combinations and relationships among these details; 3) the changes that unfold over time; and 4) the diverse, often contradictory and problem-laden forms of life, geographic spaces, and wider worlds that emerge from these interactions and upon which human survival depends. Human life and the challenges associated with it are inherently uncertain, with no universally applicable solutions. Understanding these challenges is itself a dynamic process. Exploring potential solutions is therefore an intellectually stimulating and never-ending endeavor. AI offers substantial opportunities to deepen our understanding of these challenges and investigate possible solutions. Only by adopting this understanding of the future of planning and design can each planning proposal and design project become an innovative response to improving the well-being of the land, the people who depend on it, and other forms of life. Only then can the statutory responsibilities established by the two laws be genuinely fulfilled, and the practical experience gained through implementation contribute to the global body of knowledge on sustainable development.
Around 2004, Landscape Architecture faced a profound tension between the development opportunities created by rapid urbanization and the stagnation of prevailing disciplinary ideas. This tension stimulated scholars to envision new perspectives for the development of Landscape Architecture
[5–
7] and prompted candid and vigorous debate on related issues
[8–
10]. Through these discussions, participants with differing perspectives identified common ground and reached a consensus on the need to accelerate the establishment and development of Landscape Architecture as an academic discipline and professional field. This consensus initiated a period of rapid growth from 2005 to 2021. As urbanization shifts from expansion-driven growth toward the improvement of existing urban areas, Landscape Architecture has once again reached a critical juncture at which a new professional consensus must be forged.
The choice is stark: "To be, or not to be: that is the question."
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