In the context of rapidly evolving urban landscapes, the integration of green urban structures emerges as a critical solution for addressing the multifaceted challenges of climate change and mobility. This editorial outlines an approach to sustainable urban development, emphasizing the necessity of incorporating green urban structures and environmentally conscious planning principles across all facets of urban life. By analyzing the impacts of urban challenges and underlying crises, it calls for a collaborative effort among governmental agencies, private enterprises, and local communities to foster innovative solutions that mitigate ecological vulnerabilities while enhancing green urban resilience. Through the lens of green urban structures, it highlights the potential for cities to transform into more sustainable, adaptable, and resilient entities, capable of withstanding the unpredictable risks in the future.
The Resilient Cities Congress (2010∼2019) and the Daring Cities (2020 to present) were the pioneering annual global platforms showcasing the latest advancements in international research and practices of resilient cities. They have been instrumental in fostering the growth and collaborative efforts of resilient cities across the globe. Drawing from the materials and scholarly work presented at these congresses, this research comprehensively reviews the evolution of resilient cities over the last decade through the lenses of policies and actions, summarizing the cutting-edge and current trends. The journey of global resilient cities unfolds in three phases of global commitment and framework establishment, path exploration and action, and experience translation and adaption. Resilience building and financing based on multi-level actions, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and community participation have consistently been the core themes of the Resilient Cities Congress series. Emphasizing the leading role of local governments in such actions and taking into account the social, environmental, and economic dimensions, multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral cooperation and innovation is the key to achieving resilience and overall sustainable development. Moreover, in response to the new challenges and opportunities of the digital age, efforts to strengthen the cyber resilience by building a healthy and safe cyber environment are vital enhancers of sustainable urban development. Finally, the article reflects how the insights and accomplishments stemming from the Resilient Cities Congress series can inform resilient city research and practices in China. It advocates for a strategic approach that aligns with China’s unique conditions and urban characteristics, encouraging the adaptation and contextualization of resilient initiatives to craft localized and region-specific plans for building resilient cities across the nation.
This study provides a comparative analysis of the journey toward hazard-resilience by examining the resilience-related policies and local practices in five exemplary cities worldwide: Cape Town (South Africa), Greater Manchester (UK), Changsha and Wenchuan (China), and San Juan City (Puerto Rico). Through a conceptual framework encompassing seven interrelated dimensions of the social-environmental system, this paper delves into how hazard risk is perceived and resilience is approached in both policy documents and local practices. Policy reviews reveal distinct strategies among cities. Cape Town employs diverse water-saving measures, addressing drought through water resilience. Greater Manchester focuses on human and organizational aspects in disaster risk reduction. Changsha and Wenchuan prioritize specific disaster response measures, while San Juan tackles environmental and socio-economic challenges through multidimensional actions. Local practices illustrate the effectiveness of bottom-up resilience enhancement, with examples including home drilling in Cape Town and community engagement in Changsha. Despite these efforts, there is a common trend across cities of limited consideration for cultural/worldviews and urban-rural-spatial dimensions. Bridging this gap is crucial for effective risk management and disaster recovery. This study underscores the importance of aligning policy formulation with local practices, prioritizing targeted recovery plans, and expanding considerations to include the urban-rural-spatial dimension. Overall, this research contributes valuable insights to the development of hazard-resilient cities, offering policymakers and planners a foundation to prepare cities for future challenges and foster urban resilience.
The rapid development of electronic technology has resulted in the annual phase-out of a large amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment, known as “e-waste,” especially in developed countries. In the context of economic globalization, the lack of relevant environmental laws and policies in developing countries and less developed countries, as well as cheap labor, has attracted developed countries to export a large amount of domestic e-waste to these countries. The chemicals produced during the low-tech dismantling process enter the air, soil, and deep groundwater, contaminating drinking water and food, and eventually entering the human body. Due to the inequality of economic and political development, the countries and regions that generate the least e-waste suffer the most. The most affected areas include, but are not limited to, China, India, and Ghana. This paper studies the production, distribution, and movement of e-waste, and its unequal distribution and disposal patterns of e-waste on a global scale. It also analyzes the national and international recycling policies and investigates the consequences of informal dismantling practices on the economy, society, and environment. The conclusion of the paper focuses on Guiyu, China as an example to draw landscape intervention strategies from key landscape issues, specifically for farmland, rivers and urban areas. These strategies are divided into three distinct stages of recovery and development. From the perspective of landscape intervention, this paper attempts to provide research and intervention suggestions for the restoration of ecology, health, and livelihood in global e-waste polluted areas.
Exploring the effect ecological design methods is a critical issue for sustainable development, yet a gap still exists between the research and practices of ecological landscape design. This study employed pragmatic designed experiments as its core method, integrating methodologies from empiricism, positivism, and romanticism to propose a semi-empirical ecological design framework that emphasizes learning by doing and research through practice. The framework encompasses three steps: prototyping, designed experiments, and monitoring and adjustment. The study further took the restoration project of Haizhu Wetland in Guangzhou as an example by proposing five designed experiments based on the analysis of form prototypes suitable for the site: the mound-based orchard wetland system, enhanced paddy field system, bird island, high-tide habitat, and a low-maintenance resilient water system. Corresponding design hypotheses and monitoring and adjustment evaluation indicators were also offered. The results showcase the feasibility of integrating ecological research with practical application to steer ecological design optimization and enhance the resilience of anthropogenic ecosystems. Although the wetland renovation project has initially shown ecological benefits and social welfare, the effectiveness of this design framework still requires further tracking and validation.
The disasters frequently happened these years made the term “resilience” gained increasing attention. Since the end of the 20th century, the way of responding to disaster risks has evolved from disaster prevention to reduction, and now to resilience governance, shifting from the pursuit of “zero risk” to living with risk. In this interview, Professor Guofang Zhai from Nanjing University summarizes the development process of resilient city construction in China, highlighting that the primary task is to enhance infrastructure resilience. Facing the issue of spatial imbalance of urban resilience, it is essential to give full play to the role of territorial spatial planning, with whole-process, multi-factor, multi-system research on urban resilience as an important reference for planning and design, and take disaster scenario simulation as a crucial technical approach. It is necessary to implement both engineering and non-engineering measures, to increase public awareness of risks and to encourage individual participation into the building of resilient cities. Planners and designers should also have a deeper understanding of the possible disasters and be prepared for emergency responses to disasters that exceed standard defense levels.
Facing the irreversible decline of anthropogenic landscapes, what should be the aesthetics for landscape architects to design a perishing site? How should landscape design inform ecological grief from disappearing sites? This article evaluates the intersection of landscape aesthetics and material performance as agencies in the drying Aral Sea for design intervention.
This article challenges conventional ways of landscape conservation which aim to halt or reverse ecological degradation. Instead, it proposes a paradigm where the design for the anthropogenic landscape in the Aral Sea is not to solely conserve what is left, but rather allows a dignified decline. This perspective suggests that the aesthetics of designing anthropogenic landscapes depends on making visible the impact of human actions on the land and addressing resultant ecological grief, where nonhuman elements and their agency play a vital role in addressing the ecological losses.
The proposed design interventions involve creating a system of brine pools, tillage mounds, sand-capturing dunes, and ecological markers, and seek to employ non-human entities, including both inorganic and organic materials like sand, salt, and plantings, in mitigating the demise of the Aral Sea. In essence, this article strives to make human devastation in the Anthropocene perceptible by designing an educative experience while slowing the disappearance of the dying sea.