This article stresses the importance of positive image and perception of dynamic ecological processes for the implementation and care of areas which provide ecosystem services within the city. Those in turn secure the resilience of our urban environment. Aesthetic experience with emphasis on highlighting and revealing the presence of ecological dynamics, processes and cycles can increase the acceptance and interest for sustainable goals and projects within the city. Thus, several European cities are currently implementing strategies not only to enhance the capacity of their green networks for ecological services and resilience but most importantly to enhance the acceptance and active use of such areas. They are integrating the public in an open debate about implementing new attractive ecological amenities within a green network, and also stimulating landscape architects to find ways to design important ecological processes and functions in an eye-catching and spectacular way. The natural dynamics and cycles are thus brought to the attention of the people and present an important artistic and cultural component of resilience.
In the past 30 years, Sanya has developed into a high-density city with fragmented ecosystems and bottlenecked urban development. In April 2015, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development proposed “Ecological Restoration and Urban Remediation” for Sanya and prioritized the Sanya and Linchun Rivers — two rivers that run through the central city — as core causes. The Fengxinglong Ecological Park project is located at the junction of the two rivers in downtown and its surroudings are occupied for various land uses. Diversified urban interfaces, abundant green space, and numerous ecological contradictions make the site critical for the remediation and restoration of waterways in Sanya. Through a series of resilient landscape design interventions, Fengxinglong Ecological Park catches, stores, and purifies rainwater to reduce river pollution and flooding disasters in addition to offering recreational funtions. As a valuable “urban sponge” and comprehensive resilient ecological park, it has helped restore the historic ecosystem and realized the intensive use of resources.
Uncertainty exists in the current urban development of contemporary cities and is getting diversified and complicated. Identifying and adapting to such uncertainty is partly defining the future development of urban planning and design. The concept of “resilient city” is developed from the current scientific demands in urban planning and design. This article suggests that Complex Adaptive System as a new system theory would help resilient city planning and construction. According to the Complex Adaptive System theory, a resilient city should possess the adaptability of its components, diversity, autonomy, appropriate redundancy, slow-variable management, and identification, in order to improve the ecological, social, and economic resilience and vitality of the city.
This article focuses on enterprises’ role and responsibility in improving urban resilience of water environment of Chinese cities, starting with the research efforts of Beijing Enterprises Water Group in recent years, the application of water pollution remediation technologies, then to the current status, key tasks, and problems in China’s water environmental remediation, as well as how to change people’s awareness of grey water facilities and infrastructures and promote public engagement. Mao Jianhua, the interviewee, argues that it is important to understand that the regional situations vary in China, water environmental problems are complicated resultants of industrial structure, infrastructure construction, and social management; to deal with China’s water environmental issues, we shall develop phased roadmaps combining with social-economic development. He believes that a working water environmental remediation is guaranteed by grey infrastructures and is facilitated or improved by ecological infrastructures. He also emphasizes that public engagement plays a decisive role in improving the resilience and sustainability of urban water environment.
Most of the pressing challenges in the Anthropocene era are ecological, such as climate change and environmental degradation, all with profound impacts on socio-economics and equity. While ecology and resilience are among the most salient topics in contemporary landscape architecture, their inherent relationship and differences have deep implications on practice. The authors argue that ecology is all-encompassing and has a strong focus on system complexity without biasing or favoring any specific species or parts of the ecosystem. Resilience, when discussed in the context of planning and design, however, embodies a strong human-centric element. Ecocentric vs. anthropocentric perspectives provoke further discussion around an evolving relationship between ecological function and aesthetic forms that have been heavily informed by cultural and societal contexts.
By translating environmental policies and social preferences, landscape architects command tremendous power to connect with the primary users of the built environment — the general public. Collaboration and integrated research are required to make significant progress on the complex environmental challenges the world faces today.
Launched in May 2017, the Resilient by Design | Bay Area Challenge was a year-long collaborative design challenge bringing together local residents, public officials and local, national and international experts to develop innovative solutions that will strengthen our region’s resilience to sea level rise, severe storms, flooding, and earthquakes. The Resilient by Design | Bay Area Challenge has not only created tangible solutions for threatened communities across the region — it is now a blueprint for how communities can collaborate in the future to tackle the challenges related to climate change we are facing in the future. Each team’s proposal illuminates both immediate and longer-term ways to safeguard the Bay Area and make it more environmentally, socially, and economically resilient.
Coastal Resilience Solutions for East Boston and Charlestown outlines near- and long-term strategies to protect vulnerable neighborhoods from flooding in two of Boston’s most disadvantaged areas. The resilience strategy embraces layered flood control and integrated green infrastructure measures that mitigate the effects of climate change, and create social, environmental and economic benefits to the people of East Boston and Charlestown and to all who share in the health of the city and the harbor. It creates a strong vision for districtlevel flood protection including clearly identified design opportunities in the short- and long-term and robust roadmaps for implementation, and in doing so, sets the stage for additional future efforts to be undertaken by the City of Boston.
Despite broad interest in the subject of urban resilience, the discourse remains largely siloed by discipline. With Metro Manila as a backdrop, this essay addresses gaps in resilience literature and practice by introducing a social-ecological urban design concept of resilience, defined here as: The ability for overlapping place-based and sector-specific networks, systems, and communities that operate across temporal and spatial scales to anticipate and absorb disturbances such that they can transition into more socially, ecologically, and spatially equitable states. This concept bridges natural, human, and spatial systems and is empirically grounded in historical research, field observations, and interviews. In response to programs which emphasize out-of-city relocation to reduce vulnerability, authors propose three principles of urban resilience that instead emphasize social equity and ecological harmony through the spatial integration of formal and informal communities. These principles include: design with nature, not against it; support a shared economy; and break down development silos.
The United Nations estimates that 40% of the 300 million tons of plastic produced each year are disposed of within a year. At that rate there could be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050. Developing countries such as China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam contribute up to 60% of the plastics waste drifting in the world’s sea. Much of the plastic is trapped in the South China Sea for two years before drifting out to the Pacific Ocean. The plastic problem has increased as Chinese recyclers have relocated to Southeast Asia and began importing waste from all over the world. The imported plastics are cheap and clean, outcompeting the dirty plastics collected locally from the tides. The recycled plastic price dropped to unprecedented level in 2017, discouraging plastic scavenging by locals. This thesis empowers the waste pickers by designing structures that incentivize plastic recycling. The thesis proposes that the plastic tides can be mined, shredded, cleaned, dried, baked, and cooled in an efficient and holistic landscape system.