Industrialization and urbanization have improved people’s standard of living, but these two processes have also accelerated consumption of ecological goods and services. China’s increasingly high carbon footprint relative to energy consumption and the decreasing ability of forestlands to absorb CO2 have become primary causes of ecological degradation while also effecting China’s territorial ecological security. This paper analyzes China’s carbon footprint to determine how the ecological security pattern has been effected by regional energy consumption. China’s per capita carbon footprint has doubled more than twenty times since 1949, while the relationship of ecological deficit to territorial security has not been adequately considered. Regional differences in carbon footprint, due to the uneven distribution of energy resources as well as uneven social and economic development, now threaten China’s territorial ecological security. Finally, this paper suggested that regional energy consumption and natural ecological reserves are the two factors most effecting the ecological security pattern of China’s energy consumption.
Negative Planning Approach is a reverse spatial planning method which gives priority to preserving and planning nonurban development area. Taking landscape security pattern as its methodological base, Negative Planning Approach is a rigid framework to control urban growth, aiming to develop ecological infrastructure plans as its planning strategy and results, and establishing a green network which can ensure national territorial security and ecosystem services. This article reviews the concept and theories of Negative Planning Approach and elaborates its new theoretical advances in the fields of spatial planning and protection planning of national territory, sponge city construction, new urbanization, and new rural construction. Then it further reviews the application and exploration of Negative Planning Approach in the past decade. Finally, this article points out the insufficiency of the current research on Negative Planning Approach, and puts forward prospects including the combination of Negative Planning Approach with conventional planning methods, strengthening quantitative evidence-based study, taking urban self-organized growth and inventory renewal into consideration, and enhancing related management and implementation.
This interview started with distinguishing the concepts of ecological security, ecological security pattern, and landscape ecological security pattern and stressed the importance of the integration of landscape architecture and ecology in design practice. Then it introduced the concept of Gross Ecosystem Product, its background, and the scope of its application. The just-completed “National Ecosystem Survey and Assessment of China (2000-2010)” systematically assessed the status and trends of China’s ecosystems, analyzed the changes in ecosystem quality and services, and explored the future of environmental protection and urban ecological construction. Finally, the interviewee also analyzed the difficulties in urban planning and construction, concerning ecological protection redline delimitation and department cooperation.
With the transition towards a new urbanization, China’s ecological infrastructure construction has gained more and more attention, resulting in a large number of ecological infrastructures including Sponge City projects. As an experienced environmental science and engineering firm, Herrera has been closely working on China’s ecological infrastructure projects over the past decade. In this interview, Herrera recognizes the theoretical changes and technical improvement, notes the shortages and difficulties in practice, and shares their perspectives on China’s future ecological infrastructure construction.
Improved liveability and climate adaption should go hand in hand when designing sponge cities. The cloudburst masterplan for Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, is an example of an ambitious effort to protect the city against future heavy rain events. Following the masterplan, the city began to implement the sponge city landscape design for each Copenhagen district. The landscape design was intended to not only deal with more frequent extreme weather events, but also significantly improve urban liveability for both present and future residents. This effort was achieved for less of an investment than traditional cloudburst engineering design.
This project uses a participatory process to inform design decision making in the Manchester neighborhood of Houston, Texas, USA. Vacant and underutilized parcels are stressed as key facets for ecological infrastructure placement. The proposed design increases green spaces seven times its current amount, strengthening the neighborhood’s capability to attenuate flooding.
Like many growing metropolitan areas worldwide, Manila’s growth comes at the expense of agricultural land and water quality, compromising the lifeline resources of the region’s existing communities. Ananas represents an alternative approach to urban development that aspires to secure these vital resources while celebrating the agricultural, social, and ecological heritage of the Philippines and its “bayanihan” spirit of communal unity and cooperation in a contemporary and innovative manner.
The site of the Luming Park was a remnant patchwork landscape made up of rolling hills, a riparian flood plain along the river basin and vegetated areas of bushes and grasses, etc. Scattered in this landscape were some local landscape heritages. Instead of leveling the site, which is conventionally used in dealing with such situation, the landscape architects created a dynamic urban park by incorporating the agricultural strategy of crop rotation and a low maintenance meadow. Ideas such as “stormwater management,” “agricultural urbanism and productive landscape,” and “minimum interventionare” were integrated into the landscape design strategy to “frame the terrain and water,” by quilting boardwalks and trail networks for recreation onto the site.
Typical of urbanization in China, dense, high-rise relocation residences have poor open space provision, leading to sedentary lifestyles and limited contact with nature. Located 5 km east of the city center of Ningbo, the 83-hectare Platform Park strives to solve the conflict and creates a centerpiece of the urban development, providing a significant open space for adjacent new communities, technology sector, universities, and cultural facilities including a historic temple. Particularly, the first phase provides a much-needed open space for multi-generational families, directly benefiting an adjacent relocation community. The 2.5-hectare area has transformed the way people connect to the waterfront, encouraging daily exercise and contact with nature through a diverse range of uses and landscape types. The park integrates typhoon resilience, climate change adaptation and creates a platform for health, fitness, social interaction and ecological restoration.
The landscape design studio of Professor Christophe Girot at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland investigated new settlement typologies within the extreme environmental condition of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona: wet and dry, hot and cold, permanent and ephemeral. From early sketches in sand models to computer simulations, CNC models and water dynamics, the studio took a hands-on approach in understanding the natural processes of flash floods and erosion on the site. The integration of infrastructure, architecture and ecology into a single design solution challenged the students to structure the settlements with respect to both natural processes and the Jeffersonian grid. For the students, both the formal and the performative settlement solutions arose from this superimposition where the sublime nature of the site, being exempt of almost any human artifact, proved to be the perfect testing ground. During the course of the studio, it became clear that the only way to solve a settlement principle in this flood prone area was to develop design solutions on the large scale of the valley and at the scale of a single step simultaneously. The final projects showed a clear understanding of the tectonic and topological expression for a new type of occupation in the desert.
How is the landscape modified by air transportation? Can the landscape and airport infrastructure be integrated following ecological criteria? How can an airport be integrated into the local context? What design devices can be used? What are the influences on the urban context? How can we accommodate the current technological needs of airports with new unexpected uses in the future? In the future, how might disused airport infrastructure possibly be “recycled”?
This article tells the story behind four main research projects on airport landscapes — “Airport Urbanism,”“Ecological Airport Urbanism,” “Treviso Airport Urbanism” and “Fertile Infrastructure” — in an attempt to explore an experimental methodology to design an ecological airport system at landscape and urban scale.