In compact cities, one of the main challenges is the competition for limited urban land resources between people and vehicles, where shared parking infrastructure may offer a potential solution. Building on existing literature, this study presents a technical framework for the time-division multiplexing strategy of transportation infrastructure, and explores its application in an old central urban area in China as a case study. This strategy includes three main steps: supply and demand identification, planning and design, and community promotion. Firstly, from macro to micro scales, identify characteristics of parking lots' usage rates and the public activity demands based on mobile signaling data and field survey results. Secondly, develop the time-division multiplexing rules for parking lots according to the above characteristics and detailed spatial planning and design schemes. Finally, design an interactive model that can provide the public's real-time feedback to ensure effective implementation of the schemes by guiding public behavior. Grounded in compact city theories, this approach extends spatial land use limitations by introducing a temporal dimension. By blending big data coverage with field surveys and interviews, and integrating planning and design with public participation, this study offers an effective solution to urban conflicts between people and vehicles.

● Focuses on time-division multiplexing strategies to address people and vehicle conflict by optimizing the use of limited space over time

The capital of Indonesia is planned to be relocated to East Kalimantan, Borneo Island starting 2024. Borneo Island is treasured for its vast biodiversity and enormous rainforest ecosystem. Entitled "Nagara Rimba Nusa, " the design of the core area of the new capital city Ibu Kota Nusantara, brought the idea of building a city with the wisdom of Indonesian Culture and Forests. Taking forest ecosystem as the foundation and core, the design approach reflects urban forming process, responsive design, and nature-inspired architecture. This article strives to unfold the design principles and inventions dealing with the complex interlaced relations between the city and the forest, which reflect the ideas and literature of landscape urbanism. Landscape urbanism is portrayed as a development agent and a way of thinking in the design strategies for Kawasan Inti Pusat Pemerintahan (KIPP), to embed the urban form into Borneo's forest ecosystem. Through this perspective and innovative design approaches, Nagara Rimba Nusa creates an ideal city that fits in the context of forest environment.

● Integrates Indonesia’s local wisdom of nature and landscape urbanism in creating a sustainable urban environment for the new capital city

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.

● Constructs a learning-by-doing and semi-empirical ecological design framework based on pragmatism to facilitate effective learning through practices

Since the initiation in 2002, the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) have attracted widespread attention from the international heritage community. Although the total number of GIAHS projects in China has ranked among the top in the world, most of these heritage sites still face challenges of insufficient value interpretation and presentation, as well as unsustainable protection and utilization. This research draws on the concept of rural environmental museum to establish a multi-scale protection framework for Mulberry-dyke & Fish-pond GIAHS. Taking the mulberry-dyke & fish-pond agricultural heritage in Digang Village of Huzhou City in Zhejiang Province as an example, layered protection strategies were proposed considering its current status. At the macro-scale, delineate the heritage interpretation scope according to the refined regional cultural identity; at the meso-scale, build a graded facility system for heritage value display according to the determined display sequence; at the micro-scale, enhance the sense of place in daily landscapes and integrate daily community activities into heritage spaces. This path from heritage value interpretation to spatial planning can provide reference for related protection practice of other GIAHS projects.

● Theoretically established a generally applicable framework for the protection of Mulberry-dyke & Fish-pond GIAHS

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.

● Challenges conventional environmental conservation by designing the beautiful death of the Aral Sea

As a highly urbanized bay area bustling with socio-economic activities, Shenzhen Bay is a pivotal stopover and wintering habitat for migratory birds along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. The Futian Mangrove National Important Wetland, located in the northeast of Shenzhen bay, is a part of the Guangdong Neilingding–Futian National Nature Reserve. As the smallest national nature reserve in China, the wintering habitat of migratory birds has been significantly impacted by the compacted surrounding built-up environment. It has become an urgent need for refined high-quality ecological restoration for the habitats. This project leveraged Nature-based Solutions to develop a refined model for the ecological restoration of coastal wetland waterbird habitats in compact urban areas. By analyzing waterbird behaviors and habitat requirements, this model outlined six strategies: water surface expansion, water level control, hydrodynamic conditions improvement, shoal transformation, adaptive vegetation management, and disturbance control. To effectively guide the restoration implementation, high-, medium-, and low-adaptive approaches were proposed accordingly. After restoration in 2022, notable increases in target species, such as Platalea minor, were observed. The variety of waterbirds of the reserve in 2022 increased by 33% compared with 2021, while increased by 50.9% compared with 2016, significantly enhancing ecosystem services of the coastal area. As urban renewal in China is shifting towards spatial redevelopment, this model offers valuable insights for ecological restoration aiming at coastal wetland waterbird conservation across the country, and substantially supports establishing the "International Mangrove Center" in Shenzhen.

● Explores Nature-based Solutions on refined coastal wetland restoration in highly urbanized area

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 regionspecific plans for building resilient cities across the nation.

● Reviews the global resilient city development from 2010 to present based on the Resilient Cities Congress series and Daring Cities

As global climate continues to change, it is pressing to integrate the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals into territorial spatial planning. While little existing ecological restoration research focuses on counties in western China, particularly arid areas of northwest China, this research took Wensu County of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China as the study case, evaluated the carbon sequestration capacity and carbon storage of the current carbon sinks, identified the spatial pattern of carbon sinks, and proposed the territorial ecological restoration approaches to increasing carbon sinks. The evaluation results show that the importance level of carbon sinks varies significantly across geographical environments of the county, where one primary carbon sink, two secondary carbon sinks, and potential carbon sinks with a total area of 2259.81 km² were identified. This research extracted eight typical land use patterns based on current land use and proposed ecological restoration strategies accordingly. This research shows a way to integrate carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals in territorial spatial planning, which is instrumental for carbon sink management in the arid areas of northwest China and provides a referable paradigm for regions with similar geographical conditions.

● Focuses on ecological restoration in a county in the arid areas of northwest China, aiming for carbon sink increase

Facing the challenges of global climate change, the construction of low-carbon cities has become an inevitable pathway, where carbon emission assessment is a critical part to the transition towards digitalized urban planning and design of low-carbon cities. However, comprehensive review on carbon assessment tools applied to urban planning and design is absent. As a response, this paper selected and reviewed typical digital assessment tools of carbon emissions at both the city and district/neighborhood scales, and summarized their measuring dimensions and reference data. Currently, tools based on energy system planning and operational energy simulation dominate the field, while tools for carbon emission and carbon sink estimations based on land use types or materials are rapidly developing due to the increasing refinement of carbon emission assessments and shifts of decarbonization policies. At present, these tools are primarily used in energy planning and design, governmental decision-making, and building structural design and material choice, and their application in urban planning and design practice, especially in the early stages, remains limited. Hence, this study further underscored the limitations and potential development directions of existing carbon emission assessment tools by case studying low-carbon practices worldwide that have not utilized digital assessment tools—in the future, improving tools' flexibility and adaptability for diverse scenarios, building comprehensive databases, incorporating the calculation of operational carbon, embedded carbon, and carbon sinks, and aligning with the needs for multi-dimensional, multi-criteria, and full-process assessments should be put into more efforts.

● Summarizes five categories of carbon emission assessment tools at both city and district/neighborhood scales

A lack of safe drinking water supply is the cause of a number of waterborne diseases such as cholera. Even nowadays, an estimated 100,000 people die from cholera each year. Since the early/mid-19th century relatively simple but highly effective engineering solutions were developed that helped provide clean drinking water. In 1892 the City of Hamburg, Germany was hit by a cholera epidemic and more than 8,000 people died within a few weeks. As a consequence, sedimentation and filtration systems to provide clean drinking water were built. They were in operation for nearly a century and subsequently became disused in recent decades. Since then, a number of proposals including large mixed-use developments were put forward and over time adapted to the changing needs to offer educational and recreational services, as well as enhancing natural assets. While the historic buildings of high heritage value were conserved, the sedimentation and filtration systems in their landscape setting transformed through natural succession combined with design interventions into attractive and valuable habitats. In addition, some of the former sedimentation basins were found to be the most suitable locations to compensate for the environmental impact of the highly disputed dredging of the Elbe River and were redesigned to provide a new habitat for a rare and endemic plant species.

● Just 150 years ago, there was essentially no infrastructure in place to provide a clean and safe water supply, which is regarded as standard today

Nowadays, territorial spatial planning and landscape architecture face a perplexing paradox: research in these realms often directly adapts the research paradigms and methods from other disciplines, gradually losing its connection with planning and design practices. To address this dilemma, this article advocates for the strengthening of holism research by acknowledging the disparity between the demands of holistic decision-making in planning and design practice and the reductionist framework of modern scientific research. It suggests three ways in response to the disparity: enhancing the systematic extraction of practical experiences, strengthening the holistic exploration of system science, and promoting the synthesis of interdisciplinary knowledge.

Enhancing the nighttime environment of urban green spaces to improve visitor's experiences plays a pivotal role in realizing the full functional potential of these spaces and promoting the health and well-being of residents. However, the predominant focus of designers tends to be on artificial illumination within nightscapes, often overshadowing the consideration of natural lights such as moonlight. In this study, a total of 44 photographs of nightscapes with and without artificial lights at half- and full-moon nights respectively were taken using digital cameras at 11 sample sites of urban green spaces. Scored by college students, these photographs were assessed according to visitors' experience in five dimensions. The results indicated that at both half- and full-moon nights, the average scores of the five experience dimensions in artificial lights were higher compared with moonlight conditions. However, at full-moon night, no significant difference in aesthetic preference, relaxation, and interestingness between artificial light and moonlight conditions was found; whereas, in terms of safety and willingness to visit, the scores under artificial light condition were significantly higher than those under moonlight. At half-moon night, there was no significant difference in aesthetic preference between artificial light and moonlight conditions, but the other four experience dimensions were significantly higher under the artificial light condition. These findings provide a theoretical basis to support the reintroduction of moonlight into urban green spaces.

● A comparative study on differences in visitors’ experiences of nightscapes within urban green spaces between artificial light and moonlight conditions

This study introduces a Landscape Information Modeling–Stable Diffusion (LIM–SD)-based digital workflow for ecological engineered landscaping (EEL) design, focusing on urban river wetlands. It explores how students from diverse academic backgrounds perform EEL tasks using the LIM–SD approach. A total of 30 participants, including industrial design postgraduates and landscape architecture undergraduates and postgraduates, completed the design tasks. The efficacy of their designs was assessed through expert evaluations on site appropriateness, aesthetics, spatial layout, and eco-engineering techniques of the design proposals, as well as the parametric simulation which calculated the vegetation coverage rate and proportion of riparian areas for each design. Moreover, evaluation of participants' subjective design experiences was conducted via questionnaires. Results indicated that landscape architecture postgraduates outperformed others applying ecological engineering principles. The study also elucidated discrepancies between LIM models and SD-generated renderings, as well as the uncertainty of SD-generated renderings, suggesting improvements are needed to align digital outputs with ecological design criteria.

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.

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.

● Reveals varied hazard resilience strategies across five global cities: Cape Town, Greater Manchester, Changsha, Wenchuan, and San Juan City

Design increasingly plays a pivotal role in achieving justice for all. However, there are often gaps between visions and implementation due to the variety of factors and stakeholders involved in design practice. Through literature review and a keyword co-occurrence analysis, this paper investigates current landscape justice research and identifies the distinguishing concerns in design, and highlights the importance of systematic thinking in achieving landscape justice. By examining the practices of the British company Building Design Partnership (BDP), a multinational design company, this paper identifies BDP’s three key design principles as experiences can be followed for landscape justice: design for inclusion, design for resilience, and design for future ecosystems. The paper also addresses potential challenges and conflicts in implementing landscape justice across different contexts and highlights multinational design companies’ efforts to mediate between various stakeholders. Finally, this paper demonstrates that design companies can contribute to 1) bridging social and environmental justice through landscape design, 2) achieving the visions promoted by scholars, 3) identifying and deploying diverse approaches to achieving landscape justice with their sensitivity to practical problems, and 4) fostering integrated feedback loops via both top-down and bottom-up approaches to ensure effective implementation of landscape justice.

● Investigates current landscape justice research and identifies the gap between theories and design practice through a keyword co-occurrence analysis

Faced with the future decentralization trends of intelligent agent distribution in urban neighborhoods, this article proposes a new, integrated pathway of “intelligent construction + scenario operation.” Its innovativeness lies in incorporating intelligent technology into processes of urban design, neighborhood renewal, and scenario operation. The pathway is tested through the empirical research on the case of the Shanghai Vanke Future City (NEXUS) project. In this project, the “intelligent construction + scenario operation” pathway is mainly demonstrated in scenarios of “intelligent transportation,” “convenient living,” “inclusiveness and security,” and “environmental governance.” The project becomes the model of combining production, ecology, and living together under Shanghai’s new city strategy, and has gained positive social impacts. It verifies that the pathway is conducive to improving the design, construction, and operation qualities of future urban neighborhoods, providing a reference for China’s smart neighborhood construction in the future.

● Proposes a pathway of "intelligent construction + scenario operation" for smart neighborhoods of future city

This paper explores the application of digital twins (DT) in urban planning and landscape design. Initially developed in fields such as manufacturing and engineering, DT has emerged as a critical tool for replicating and simulating the physical world within a virtual environment. Its application enables real-time monitoring and future transformation simulations, offering profound implications for urban planning and landscape design. Despite its broad applicability, implementing DT in less controlled contexts like urban landscape environments presents unique challenges, particularly drawing skepticism around the feasibility of launching a universal city-level DT. This paper advocates for site-scale DTs focusing on specific urban elements, such as parks, buildings, and infrastructure, to enable more controlled and effective modeling environments, emphasizing the importance of creating an urban DT network through serial site-scale DTs. This approach requires ongoing experimentation in landscape and urban design practices and supportive economic and policy environments to foster interdisciplinary research and design and market adoption. Drawing from three design proposals, this paper explores the transformative potential of site-scale DTs, highlighting its role in creating more interactive, participatory, and responsive environments by integrating citizen data on emotions, interactions, and health factors, thereby advancing the design-intervened virtual-physical interface of public spaces and urban landscapes.

● Advocates for site-scale DT to enhance integration with existing urban design and planning practices

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, multisystem 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.

● The years of 2005, 2015, and 2020 are three significant milestones of China’s resilient city construction

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.

● The global e-waste flow pattern is analyzed under the background of economic globalization and unequal environment distribution

The katsura tree at Dumbarton Oaks is among the oldest of the species in North America and pre-dates the design of the garden. Japanese master gardener Kurato Fujimoto was commissioned to inspect and lead the construction and installation of a series of branch supports, known as "hoozue" in Japan, to rejuvenate this venerable tree that was in decline. The assessment of the tree included the inspection of the branch structure with a projection toward post-installation growth over the next several decades. Materials such as rope, bark fabric, nails (kasugai), and the wooden hoozue themselves were fabricated and installed with indigenous knowledge and experience, which were described in the text and drawings and documented in a series of photographic sequences. This article narrates the process of this preservation work, demonstrating the significance of this indigenous Japanese technique.

● It studies an indigenous Japanese arboriculture technique that has time-tested success yet may be different from accepted practices

Artificial intelligence (AI) image generation is revolutionizing traditional workflow in landscape architecture industry, among which the "image-to-image" generative adversarial network (GAN) exhibits potential to facilitate concept design. Therefore, it underscores the importance of applicability evaluation from the perspective of users. This research aims to evaluate the quality of the GAN-generated results, their effectiveness in integrating with design workflows, and the landscape architects' acceptance of the results through image analysis and user survey. The evaluation focuses on layout generation and masterplan rendering within the Pix2Pix–BicycleGAN workflow. The evaluation metrics of image analysis including block number absolute/Euclidean distance, histogram distance, and structural similarity index measure, were employed. Additionally, the online survey with two questionnaires was conducted to evaluate the visual realism and preference for color and texture of the GAN-generated results. The findings indicate that the GAN-generated layout exhibits a high similarity to the human-designed layout, and the GAN-rendered masterplans fulfill the criteria for concept design and garner positive user acceptance. Conclusively, this study delves into the intrinsic rationality of the GAN generation methods and limitations in professional ethics and data bias, reflecting on the gaps between current AI-assisted design methods and evidence-based design.

● Quantitative applicability evaluation of "image to image" landscape masterplan generation method

As an extension of environmental justice, landscape justice emphasizes achieving inclusive and equitable planning and design in both built and natural environments, allowing different social groups to enjoy and share landscape resources and benefits more equally. By endowing landscape design with a “just” orientation, landscape justice significantly improves the spatial and environmental benefits while promotes the process of environmental justice. Landscape justice is characterized by its interdisciplinary nature, showing great variability in spatio-temporal scales, site dimensions and attributes, and social groups and scenarios, the research of which urgently requires in-depth dialogues, sincere collaborations, and active explorations among multiple disciplines. We call for enriching the connotation of landscape justice through interdisciplinary perspectives and addressing practical issues, to provide innovative spatial propositions and paths for creating sustainable urban environments and landscapes.