Existing large-scale urban green spaces in a low distribution density can hardly meet citizens’ diverse and growing needs for convenient access and sharing modes, especially to those living in old communities. Compared with formal green spaces, informal green space (IGS) is a new urban green infrastructure contributing to the city’s coconstruction, co-governance, and co-sharing. This study was conducted based on a typical old residential community in the historic city center of Beijing, namely Beitaipingzhuang Neighborhood, acquired residents’ opinions, evaluation, and willing to participate in IGS governance, and investigated their preference of IGS renovation, activity, and the positive / negative perception of IGS scenarios through virtual renovation proposals upon the real scenes. According to the survey result, most residents have been aware of the existing IGS in communities as well as the advantages and disadvantages, and shown their support to IGS cogovernance; residents’ preference of IGS renovation scenarios is significantly affected by environmental factors—residents prefer the green spaces with a higher plant richness, a larger crown size, and a more complete leisure facility system. Therefore, residents’ positive perception can be enhanced through enriching plant species, adjusting green space ratio, and introducing proper planting patterns and facility types. Finally, the authors put forward several research interests for following up so as to provide targeted guidelines for the optimization of urban living environment.

One of the core values of urban wilderness construction is to restore the structures and functions of biological communities in fragmented urban habitats, and enable the stability and ecological succession of native communities with low human intervention. The paper discusses the design principles and technical methodologies in active urban rewilding by the example of Shanghai Urban Biodiversity Education Base project. Aiming to restore urban biodiversity and enrich the technical and theoretical research of urban wilderness construction and Nature-based Solutions, this project conducted habitat division, native species introduction, natural community construction, ecological benefit assessment, etc. In a year and a half, 260 native plant species, 255 insect species, 7 amphibian and reptile species, 71 bird species, and 6 mammal species were recorded within the 1.7 hm2 project site, showing higher biodiversity and density of animal populations than unrestored consructed forests surrounding. Along with the spontaneous progressive succession of the plant communities, the project has achieved good results. The technical approaches proposed in the project can be broadly applied in design and construction of country parks, wildlife habitats, ecological corridors / networks, and environmental education bases.

While the current urban public space pays more attention to the physical construction for the promotion of public health, systematic and specific studies on mental health is insufficient. Through the selection of a specified group of users and the analysis of their mental desire, this article explores the possibility of promoting urban mental health by spatial design. The "Tokyo Loneliness Tree Hole Plan" project suggests reconsidering and reshaping the positive perception of loneliness based on the Salutogenesis Theory and proposes a design guideline for tackling urban loneliness. The project utilizes a scenario-based research method to conceive a systematic strategy for establishing an urban "spiritual infrastructure," which offers the lonely individuals a chance to get along with themselves, the space, and the feeling of loneliness. As the new typology of urban public space with publicity and privacy simultaneously, "Urban Tree Holes" create empathy

about solitariness between natural landscape elements and humans in oriental design aesthetics, in order to mitigate the urban loneliness and respond to the mental desire. "One Person Park" as an alternative form of future landscape investigating the concept of "private-public space," which might fulfill the new desire of using public space in a post-pandemic era.

Landscapes and human desires are inseparable: from survival and physiological needs, to the sense of belonging and identity, and self-actualization, all of which arise from landscapes. In other words, the landscape is the tangible representation of human desires. However, human’s desires are endless. They would lead to the unrestrained creation and change, or even irreversible damages to the landscape. Eventually, human beings may bury ourselves in the abyss of desire. Fortunately, such a doom could be avoided if humans can wisely utilize the ecosystem services (landscape services) obtained from nature, instead of immoderately consuming natural resources, to maintain the harmonious relationship between human (desires) and nature (landscapes). This can not only meet human’s primary needs like survival and safety, but also realize higher-level desires.

As one of the frequently used green spaces of urban residents, residential green spaces have a positive effect on people’s mental health status. In order to understand the impact of residential green spaces on citizens’ mental health during the COVID-19 epidemic, this study collected the sociodemographic data of 556 residents from 15 residential communities in Hefei New Municipal and Culture District, Anhui Province, China in March, 2020 through online questionnaires, then adopted the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10 Scale) to evaluate the residents’ mental health status, and used GIMP Grid to quantify the green view index of residential green spaces outside the windows. Besides, a multiple linear regression model was used to explore the correlations between residential green spaces and residents’ mental health status. The findings show that green coverage ratio, satisfaction of the landscapes of green space, green view index outside the window, and green viewing duration of the residential green spaces have positive effects on residents’ mental health status. The study verifies the benefits of residential green spaces to promoting resident’s mental health status under COVID-19, providing a scientific guidance for the future practice of urban construction.

Wilderness is a cultural construct that is deeply rooted in many societies. For landscape architects and their predecessors, wilderness has long been important as a contrast to artificial garden elements, as an inspiration for naturalistic plant designs, or today as a timely contribution to reconciling cities and their inhabitants with the natural world. Since cities and wilderness have traditionally been seen as opposites, new approaches are necessary to better address the opportunities and challenges associated with wilderness in urban regions. From an ecological perspective, urban wilderness can be defined as an area characterized by a high degree of self-regulation in ecosystem processes where direct human impact is negligible. This allows two main types of wilderness to be distinguished: “ancient wilderness” represented by natural remnants in many cities, and “novel wilderness,” which arises in artificial urban-industrial sites. The two types require different approaches in designing and managing green spaces. Ancient wilderness is a traditional object of conservation and restoration, and offers inspiration for naturalistic plantings. In contrast, the emergence of novel wilderness has long been associated with neglect and socio-economic decline. Since the 1980s, however, early pioneer projects in Germany have started to integrate novel urban wilderness into the green infrastructure. The results are unprecedented green spaces that combine novel wilderness with design interventions. These places are attractive to visitors, contribute to biodiversity conservation, and support many ecosystem services. This article aims to illustrate the opportunities and challenges of integrating wilderness components and processes into the urban green infrastructure—a timely way to reconnect cities with nature.

In the early 20th century, zoning, restrictive covenants, deed restrictions, and federallysponsored real estate maps that directed bank loans operated at multiple levels to perpetuate spatial patterns that separated whites from Blacks, Asians, and other non-Anglo ethnics; homeowners from renters; and single-family dwellings from multi-family units. The obvious overtly racial biases of those systems are socially unacceptable today but their underlying purposes have since been augmented by new tools that mask further discrimination. This article presents a critical examination of the relationship between historic preservation, open space easements, and farmland preservation practices to reveal how these regulations support racial and social discrimination in American land-use practices. Existing literature presumes that history, nature, and farming, preserved by these practices are cultural, environmental, and public positives. An examination of the underlying forces shows how these goals are achieved by restrictive instruments that create exclusion and protect privilege by controlling development and establishing and maintaining social norms that exclude certain groups while welcoming others. Using documentary evidence, this paper establishes historic preservation’s origins as an instrument of racial and ethnic exclusion in Charleston, South Carolina and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of the United States, and the subsequent evolution of historic districts into gentrified, white neighborhoods. Two case studies in the New York metropolitan area, chosen for their use of historic preservation with farmland preservation (Cranbury Township, Middlesex County, New Jersey), and historic preservation with open space easements (Town of Bedford, Westchester County, New York) as resistance to affordable residential development, demonstrate how enclaves of exclusion and privilege were created. This article further establishes how these tools commodify history and landscapes into transactional entities that attain value in today’s neoliberal wealth-focused environment.

The ability of landscape architectural projects to mitigate the worst effects of climate change will depend upon designed ecological systems. These systems will be built with plants. Despite the recognition of ecology as an essential driver of landscapes, the professionals of landscape architecture too often lack the knowledge and practical skills to create robust vegetative systems. New approaches and tools are required. This article outlines principles and methods for designing biodiverse plant systems for urban sites. Planting methods that increase species richness, functional diversity, and spatial complexity are emphasized as a way of developing more resilient plantings. Selecting species with similar evolutionary adaptions to stress, disturbance, and competition—as well as creating multi-layered compositions of diverse plant morphologies—allows designers to create compatible, long-lived plant mixes. To balance the increased visual complexity of diverse plant mixes, the article explores design techniques to make plantings more appealing to the public. The strategies explored here are based on the projects, experience, and research of Phyto Studio, a Washington, D.C. based studio. The methods build on work described in the author’s book, Planting in a Post-Wild World, an exploration of how to create designed plant communities.

To all kinds of design, the negotiation between the expression of designers’ idea and the representation of users’ desire is a typical internal tension of design. Particularly, the balancing of the internal tension of the design for children requires sophisticated solutions, because the needs of the actual users are often (mis-)represented by the desire of their parents. Therefore, in addition to satisfying social needs, the designers should also recognize the collective unconsciousness of adults who express on behalf of children. Taking the studies in Developmental Psychology and Anthropology as reference, this article focuses on playing, instead of knowledge acquisition, and discusses the balancing of the internal tension of the design of playing spaces for children, especially for the preschoolers. This article aims at revealing the role of games to children’s psychological and intelligence growth, as well as their game playing mechanism, by answering two questions: why do children play games and how do they play? By illustrating a case study on the playground design of the COBY Preschool in Japan, the proposed concept of “design to not design” is expected to inspire the design of children’s playing spaces.

Urban green infrastructure is a fundamental physical structure that supports the construction of resilient cities based on nature. Currently, the conventional design paradigm oriented by deterministic control is not conducive to promoting urban resilience, and the design paradigm of green infrastructure is in urgent need of transformation. Based on literature review, this article discusses the establishment of resilient design paradigm: first, it proposes the common ground of the resilient design paradigm by establishing a framework for the resilience mechanism of urban green infrastructure; then it summarizes the resilience driving mechanism to provide the key basis for the resilience design paradigm; and finally, this article devises the resilient design paradigm based on adaptive approaches and proposes the whole-process dynamic cyclic model to guide the configuration optimization of urban green infrastructure. The establishment of the design paradigm relies on the shift in mindset, concept, design procedure, project management, quality inspection, etc., which requires the joint efforts by designers, engineers, researchers, decision makers, and the public. This article is expected to provide references not only to the construction of green infrastructure to support the high-performance of urban resilience, but also to the theory development of resilient city and the resilient design paradigm of landscape design.

City as Nature is an ecological art and media studio based primarily in Kitakagaya, a former shipbuilding district on the outskirts of Osaka, Japan. Working with local and international practitioners, and public and private organizations across multiple disciplines and sectors, they produce ecological art projects that re-connect people, process, and place with the ecosystems in which we dwell. Two narrative project studies in Kitakagaya are presented here: 1) The Branch Osaka, a physical ecological space built inside a typical wood-and-earth row house in an 80-year-old marketplace—rebuilt by City as Nature, using locally recycled materials, it now serves as a residence and ecological art space, with a natural garden and donation-based programming; 2) City as Nature Festival, an ecological neighborhood “happening,” taking place in multiple local public and privately-owned spaces. The festival explores urban relationships with the nature through art-driven dialogs between practitioners, the general public, and the urban space itself. From these projects, City as Nature hopes to explore approaches to cultivating relationships—individual, meaningful relationships between designers, executives, civic leaders, citizens, and the communities of ecosystems in and around our cities. Through an ongoing, truthful dialog with the environment, people might just discover the possible city, an equitable place for all beings.

The analysis of desire related to subjectivity is one of the subjects of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis theory is frequently cited by the theorists of design criticism, but there are few works introducing the cartographic tools used in psychoanalysis and the later developed schizoanalysis. This paper makes an intertextual correspondence between the developments of design theory and psychoanalytic cartographies, and proposes its philosophically diagnostic essence and the theoretical promotion from psychoanalysis. It is concluded that the interdisciplinary influence between psychoanalysis or schizoanalysis and design criticism has witnessed over 4 stages—which are also the primary application categories of psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis—including: 1) metaphors in literary criticisms; 2) analytical tools in ontology; 3) genealogical narrative tools in ecology of systems; and 4) synthesis operators for interdisciplinary research. The process from dualism to pluralism and the process from metaphorical representation of mirror to interdisciplinary synthesis operator experienced by psychoanalytic cartographies are consistent with the history of professional discourse and criticism paradigm development, and in fact are an epitome of philosophical theory in the second half of the 20th century. The design theory is also a part of the shift, so the graph of desire could be a way to represent the very discourse of critical history and relevant text. Lastly, possible applications of psychoanalytical and schizoanalytic cartographies in the design theory discourse are proposed.

This paper investigates the idea of cultivated wildness at the intersection of landscape design and artificial intelligence. The paper posits that contemporary landscape practices should overcome the potentially single understanding on wilderness, and instead explore landscape strategies to cultivate new forms of wild places via ideas and concerns in contemporary Environmental Humanities, Science and Technology Studies, Ecological Sciences, and Landscape Architecture. Drawing cases in environmental engineering, computer science, and landscape architecture research, this paper explores a framework to construct wild places with intelligent machines. In this framework, machines are not understood a layer of “digital infrastructure” that is used to extent localized human intelligence and agency. Rather machines are conceptualized as active agents who can participate in the intelligence of co-production. Recent developments in cybernetic technologies such as sensing networks, artificial intelligence, and cyberphysical systems can also contribute to establishing the framework. At the heart of this framework is “technodiversity,” in parallel with biodiversity, since a singular vision on technological development driven by optimization and efficiency reinforces a monocultural approach that eliminates other possible relationships to construct with the environment. Thus, cultivated wildness is also about recognizing “wildness” in machines.

Over the last 50 years, 370 large cities worldwide have severely depopulated, or shrunk, by at least 10%. Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is the third fastest U.S. shrinking city. Primarily a victim of deindustrialization, Johnstown faces severe decline issues related to depopulation, including social disorder and lowered quality of life. This project develops a framework for urban design for shrinking cities, integrating permanent functions into high development potential areas but temporary functions into declining areas. This approach allows for future development to occur through time as the city recovers. Using a GIS-based weighted overlay model to assess the threat level of decline, 4 sites were identified and strategies for each were developed. Master plans to retrofit new functions integrating residents' desire and demands into vacant / abandoned properties were then generated for each site. Rather than chasing hefty attempted quick-hitting developmental incentives, this approach will bring new long-term economic engines and lifestyles to the city due to a diversity in the economic base; it also pays attention to the social dimension of urban regeneration by providing a structured way to promoting social justice and equity in shrinking cities.

Ever since humans used branches and polished stones as weapons and tools, and made containers with clay, they had begun to get civilized apart from the wildness. With fossil energy and mechanical technology, cities, farmlands, and gardens have been constantly displacing the nature, and the wildness is disappearing. Human beings lost their instinct of wildness, lonely and dispirited. Nowadays, it is time to call for the return toward wildness. Urban wildness exists both in wildscapes and the human-intervention-free natural process or wild creatures. It is key to sustaining a healthy urban ecosystem as it can work with the laws of nature and the internal deep order as a natural ecosystem. Inspired by the aesthetics of urban wildness, humans explore the unknown world by their instinct. For me, the Fengshui forest and courtyard pond in my childhood and the relics in Yuan-ming Yuan were all unforgettable wildness. Today’s ecological civilization enters a new era that embraces wildness, and defending urban wildness is the only way for humans to move toward a higher level of civilization.

In response to increasing attention from international academia on Chinese gardens, this article advances China’s landscape studies by exploring international research trends on Chinese gardens during the 21st century. It mainly adopts a diachronic perspective to examine the journal Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes—a leading journal, and Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Trustees for Harvard University)—international academia’s leading institution on landscape studies. Using a bibliometric approach, it first carries out a statistical analysis of the rules and trends of development to explore the distribution patterns of Chinese gardens. Based on this analysis, it uses time series analysis to study the relationships of related academic discourses and contexts. The study reveals that Chinese garden studies led by Chinese scholars has attracted increasing attention from international academia and has involved growing numbers of scholars from various disciplines. Consequently, it has not only shaped much of the output from China and Britain, but is also driving a paradigm shift away from studying Chinese classical gardens to modern designed landscapes, drawing upon a monolithic approach to investigate the pluralistic, and from focusing on Chinese national interaction to transnational interaction.

Dark Matter, a research by design thesis, investigates the ecological value of human remains, and their latent agency for advancing biological diversity in urban cemeteries. The project proposes an expedited aboveground decomposition process (Natural Organic Reduction) to convert human tissue and bone into nutrient-rich soil-like materials. Following decomposition, human remains merge with non-human ecologies over time to offer mourners an extended period of ceremony and remembrance. Transference of energy and matter to adjacent non-human life is emphasized in the transition, and a memorial’s embodiment in physical space is expanded to include natural systems and ecological productivity. The funerary landscape is thus decentralized from a static site of memorial to an evolving memorial system that invites engagement with the living.

In an age of pandemic, mass extinction, and deepening climate crises, a commitment to an environmentally ethical funeral practice connects the loss of the individual to global patterns of ecological ruin and environmental decline. These layered scales of grief are experienced at divergent timescales, suggesting the need for a new typology of memorial landscape that positions the human life within larger natural cycles of birth, death, decay, and metamorphosis. Rituals of commemoration, management, and activism would be alchemized to unexpected outcomes when the program of memorial, ecological preserve, and a theater for collective actions are merged. Dark Matter proposes a network of biodiverse public landscapes where bodily death events meaningfully contribute to ecological systems of propulsive regenerative life.

The design of Jubileumsparken in Gothenburg, Sweden runs on two parallel tracks—a permanent park will be completed and opened in late 2021, and before that a series of temporary parks and installations had been set up during several public workshops since 2014. The gradual evolution of the site allows ecosystems to adapt and invites the public to leave their imprint on the park through not only directly building and planting, but even more importantly, indirectly voicing their interests and desires which impacts the final design of the permanent park. With a focus on the existing fragile ruderal and coastal ecosystems, as well as the socio-cultural heritage of the site, a 1:1 scale landscape laboratory—the Shoreline Park—was built up together with the public. It allowed for testing new materials, work methods, planting and maintenance techniques that would then be used in the permanent Play & Learn Park. The design process also highlights the need for a closer collaboration between landscape architects and maintenance staff to achieve the sustainability goals and the aesthetic value of the park over a longer period, as well as the importance of landscape architects’ continuous involvement in park maintenance and the use of digital tools. The project also adopted geotechnic infrastructure to create a gently sloping wetland and proposed a mixed planting plan of indigenous species, natural succession and exotics to address climate change, and to create preconditions for high biodiversity even in the long term. Through such prototyping and testing, the wider public, maintenance staff, and experts got engaged in this project, which initiated a dialogue about the persistence in landscape between urban ecosystems, wildscapes, and aesthetics.

Tommy Thompson Park in the city of Toronto, Canada was originally a massive landfilling project that extended 5 kilometers out into Lake Ontario. It was constructed from construction rubble and harbor dredge from the 1950s through the late 1970s, when the project was halted due to changing economic conditions. Left to its own devices, the landfill spontaneously evolved into a “nature preserve” when innumerable plants from around the world established themselves and hundreds of migrating bird species descended on the site for nesting and feeding. In the 1990s, the city of Toronto took control of the site and transformed it into a park—Tommy Thompson Park—after a carefully planned design and construction process. The design interventions enhanced public accessibility, wildlife and habitat diversity, and ecological functionality. Tommy Thompson Park is an ideal case study for examining the dynamic interaction between spontaneity and design and for how, over time, these seemingly contradictory processes can come together harmoniously.

Although experienced too much bitterness in the COVID-19 pandemic, the author took part in the online global Frontiers Forum. Inspired by one of the lectures which highlighted the view of Big History, the author argues that the human history—no matter how earthshaking it is praised to be—is just barely even worthy of mention. Illustrating with the seasonal farming sceneries and the family history of thousands of years in Xunjiansi village, Wuyuan County, Jiangxi Province, the author elaborates the vibrancy and resilience of local society and vernacular landscapes. Big History insights warn us that the immoderate exploitation of natural resources, increasing carbon emission that exceeds the carbon sequestration capacity of the nature, the overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, disappearing water bodies, biodiversity loss, etc., will eventually lead to a complete collapse and unpredictable disasters that threaten humans’ survival and may rewrite human history.

The extensive growth in most Chinese cities at the expense of local identities of living settlement. Taking the 60 residential neighborhoods in county-level cities of varied climate zones in China as examples, this paper explores their spatial–temporal changes and differences in morphology, based on 12 morphological indicators through Principal Component Analysis and correlation analysis by ArcGIS 10.2, SPSS 22, and Origin 2021. The results show that 1) the construction dating of the 60 sample neighborhoods conforms to the development of China’s housing reform; 2) the spatial morphology of residential neighborhoods in county-level cities of different climate zones could be charaterized by 5 factors, i.e. neighborhood shape, development intensity, neighborhood size, layout order, and aggregation degree; 3) the disparities in the spatial morphology of residential neighborhoods in the same climate zone in different period of time are mostly indicated with 3 morphological indicators, i.e. Building Density, Neighborhood Area, and Green Space Ratio; rather, the morphology of residential neighborhoods built during a same period of time varies largely between climate zones, mainly indicated with Green Space Ratio, Degree of Building Angle Disorder, and Degree of Building Distance Disorder; and 4) China’s housing policies, climatic conditions, residential building patterns, and the urbanization of each city together influence the spatial–temporal changes in the spatial morphology, offering references to policy making, planning, and construction to protect the regional characteristics in the future.

Suzhou City enjoys its regional water networks as a driver to promote the evolution of urban-rural landscapes, where water space is an important part of urban-rural public spaces that defines spatial characteristics, supports public health, and offers recreational opportunities. Cultural ecosystem services (CES) ranging from aesthetics, recreation, education to culture are the core public demands and a key aspect in shaping the identity and vitality of water spaces. However, along with the rapid urbanization, the historical city-water spatial pattern, social connections and relations, and regional cultural spirit have gradually faded away. Such problems can be addressed through inventory renewals and cultural revivals of water spaces based on CES enhancement. This research introduces the Importance–Performance Analysis to study CES of water spaces by examining representative water spaces of Suzhou, in order to examine the correlations between CES types and landscape elements/factors. By collecting the residents’ assessment data on the importance and performance of a series of landscape elements/factors, this research measures and evaluates the demand–supply relations of the studied water spaces, conducts a strategic zoning to identify the landscape elements/factors to maintain, of over-supply, needs no priority or to improve, respectively. Finally, the paper proposes planning strategies and construction guidance for enhancing water space CES in Suzhou in the aspects of ecological management of water network, highlighting of water town image, and planning and scheming of local projects.

The long-term effects of climate change will supersede the implications of political demarcations and divisions. Within this context, “Fantastical Borderlands” proposes a rewilded territory, a landscape of slowness, for the Irish Northwest that encapsulates the northern borderlands between Ireland and Northern Ireland. This landscape emerges as a result of the significant reduction of grazing and the anticipated flooding of low-lying lands between Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly. The narrative process considers how flood risk might be managed in conjunction with the initiation of an ambitious rewilding scheme, while remaining sensitive to landscapes of deep cultural connection. By the “reverse time capsule” with performance and exhibition, “Fantastical Borderlands” is narrated from 2200 via a series of vignettes that reflect actions taken during the two centuries prior; the years surrounding Brexit serve as a catalyst for landscape change for the border landscape. The project is liberated from its constraints to near-term planning propositions, instead enabling a focus on landscape impacts that are revealed only at extended timeframes. Ultimately, the project asks: What is the role of storytelling and mythmaking in illuminating current realities and distant futures?

Since the Battle of Okinawa and the end of World War II, Okinawa Island, one of the five main islands of Japan, has been a critical strategic location for the United States Armed Forces. Approximately 70% of the U.S. military bases in Japan are located on Okinawa Island. The bases cover one-fifth of the total Island area and expose Okinawa to various social–ecological vulnerabilities. Being unconstrained by the military base border, the social-ecological impacts of this highly militarized reality could be observed across the Island, and contaminates and disturbs ecological systems crucial for local residents and wildlife. Within the context of the ongoing debate over the military realignment on Okinawa Island, this study responds to the aforementioned challenges by proposing a landscape-based alternative realignment strategy. In particular, with the upcoming 50th anniversary of Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 2022, this work outlines four strategies for establishing an ecological symbiosis between nature, the indigenous Okinawan, and the U.S. military bases, and strengthening self-sustainability on a militarized island landscape.

Scientifically recognizing and wisely intervening the evolution of landscape is an important topic in Landscape Architecture, since evolution (change) is absolute. For human, landscape changes, however, can be measured in a relative sense. Upon such an understanding, the concept “persistent landscape” highlights the landscape’s continuity and stability over time, as well as the stable variety of physical environment. The key to understand this concept lies in landscape architects’ observation of not only the stability of natural ecosystems but also the harmony of cultural-social contexts. However, the rapid urbanization has caused many pressing problems such as the loss of characteristics in urban and rural area, environmental pollution, ecological fragmentation, and cultural fracture, which calls for landscape architects who can re-recognize the man-land relationship and formulate scientific strategies for sustainable development. In this issue, LA Frontiers hopes to offer landscape architects with insights to meet contemporary needs by embracing new landscape forms and implications, so as to create healthier and more poetic-quality living environments with cultural and spatial characteristics.

The multifaceted historical development of a landscape typically represented by archaeological sites are often overlooked in spatial planning. In this article, Managing Archaeotopes was proposed as a new concept connecting archaeological research with spatial planning. The concept advocates that an interdisciplinary approach could help to build the “Archaeotopes” of archaeological sites, which brings together their archaeological, aesthetic, and ecological values in the landscape. The authors argue that the temporal dimension, i.e. landscape history, especially in terms of the remaining relics of historic development and events in the landscape today, and the dynamics of landscape changes should be treated as necessary information for spatial planning. Thus, knowledge should be acquired from relevant disciplines reflecting the timeline and dynamics of a landscape, such as Geology, Paleontology, Archaeology, Historical Geography, as well as other relevant sources and disciplines providing local characteristic information such as Biology and Onomastics. Knowledge from Sociology and Psychology would be needed when considering human requirement. At last, topics in the present and future were proposed in five aspects to facilitate Managing Archaeotopes, and emphasized the key role of the acceptance and realization of interdisciplinary work for a successful planning in the future.

The Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) Conference is one of the highest-level global academic conferences on ecosystem service (ES) research. Focusing on the research and practice of ES worldwide, ESP Conference offers an important way to grasp the cutting-edge knowledge for scholars and professionals. Currently, ES evaluation indicators and evaluation methods have been integrated the research and practice of landscape planning and design. This paper sorted out the break-out session themes at the 10th ESP Conference related to landscape planning and summarized the research presented in each session. It analyzed and summarized the research and practice hot spots from 3 perspectives: multiple landscape types, the application of ES in planning and management, and ES mapping and modeling. Finally, the paper offers insights on future interests of the application of ES research into landscape planning, including 1) exploring ES evaluation for multiple landscape types; 2) exploring the theoretical and practical frameworks for integrating ES Science into landscape planning; and 3) exploring integrated ES modeling and mapping tools for landscape planning and management.

Fragments of wilderness dominated by natural succession exist in urban environments, and play a critical role in protecting biodiversity, supporting urban ecological processes, and connecting human beings with nature. Urban vegetation rewilding is a key approach to restricting urban wilderness by restoring the species composition, community structure and functions, eventually towards a self-maintained vegetation community. This paper, taking wildflower meadows as a reference, establishes a technical framework of urban vegetation rewilding by leveraging ecological flows and adopting quasi-nature design with minimum interventions. The framework covers 5 aspects, namely self-design, micro-topographic design, quasinature design, collaborative symbiosis design between plant community and keystone animal species, and design with natural materials. Studying the green space along the northwest lakeside of the Shuangguihu National Wetland Park in Liangping District, Chongqing, this paper provides a scientific guidance and technical paradigm for vegetation rewilding and urban wilderness restoration in the complex context of natural–artificial urban landscapes.

With the rapid advance of digital technology under the fourth industrial revolution, digital landscape and smart landscape architecture have gradually become the research hot spots in design professions. The Internet of Things (IoT), as an emerging digital tool, has shown great potential to assist operational information modeling for built landscape projects. This article, focusing on the post-operation for built projects, deliberates IoT-based approaches to operational information management (OIM) through vacancy analysis and literature review. It first argues that OIM’s main goals are performance evaluation and refined management, and points out the absence of effective monitoring tools for ecological performance and dynamic modeling tools for data storage, analysis, and visualization. Combing with existing cases, it also demonstrates and summarizes the methods for IoTbased ecological performance monitoring and dynamic information modeling, as well as the principles for related application. In addition, landscape architects and project managers should pay attention to emerging research trends of IoT technology, and more importantly, emphasize authentic application scenarios to avoid blind practice. As for the future of Landscape Architecture, this article attempts to reveal the profession development trajectory that technological upgrade leads to demand upgrade, which will also bring about changes in landscape architects’ contemporary mission and the methods for talent training, and about the innovations of landscape design and research tools.