On October 27, 2022, the Act on Accessible Environment Construction of the People’s Republic of China (Draft) was reviewed at the Second Plenary Session of the 37th Meeting of the 13th Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. This is the first law special for the construction of accessible environments in China, indicating the country’s big advance in legislation progress of such constructions. As an essential component to urban development and the improvement of urban environments, accessible environment construction would better ensure the building of inclusive cities for all. The author believes that an inclusive city for all should be warm, accessible, comfortable, and open. Thus, the construction of accessible environment should be an integral part of social development which needs feasible, high-standard solutions. Only guided by the principles of „equality, integration, and sharing,” can we—planners, designers, builders, managers, monitors, etc.—fulfill our duties to realize the envisioned accessible environments.
While making contributions to the prosperity of cities, diverse population groups have the equal right to enjoy quality urban life. However, senior citizens, children, and the disabled are vulnerable when it comes to the access to urban resources and the participation of city’s decision-making. To make the well-beings brought by urban development available to all, it is essential for a city to be inclusive by paying more attention to the needs, benefits, and rights of the disadvantaged groups. The authors believe that the creation of inclusive and friendly urban spaces requires not only new design methods and approaches, but also changes of design philosophy and mindset.
The improvement of the inclusiveness of urban parks can guarantee the recreational opportunities and experience of different user groups, especially the vulnerable ones, and is also an important way to promote the justice of urban green landscape. The research explores the influencing factors to park users’ perception and evaluation on the inclusiveness of urban parks. Through the three-level data coding and analysis, a model consisting of eight main categories (i.e. site conditions, site usage, independent mobility, supply-demand matching capacity of space and facilities, interference and limitation of recreational activities, positive emotional experience, broad social participation, and place identity) which cover 30 influencing factors to individuals’ perception of the inclusiveness of urban parks is established. The model shows that park users evaluate the inclusiveness of urban parks upon their observation of site conditions and usage, and their own recreational experience; while the latter is affected by both physical and psychological factors related to passive exclusion and active exclusion, according to the concept of design exclusion. The disparity of the physical environmental quality of urban parks would lead to users’ different emotions and feelings about recreational activities. The model helps clarify the path and key factors of inclusiveness evaluation and provides a theoretical reference for future research and practice of landscape justice.
With the advance of inclusive city and child-friendly city construction, children’s opportunities to access nature have gained increasing concern. This study explored the play preference of children aged between 3 and 12 years old when they interact with plants, as well as the corresponding environmental characteristics, with four community parks in Tianjin as examples. It collected data on behaviors, plants, and environmental factors in the surroundings concerning children’s play with plants via multiple methods including behavioral observation, behavioral mapping, questionnaire, and semi-structured interview, which were examined under theories related to cognitive development, children’s play, and affordance. Employing methods such as quantitative analysis and cross tabulation analysis, the study further obtained the frequency of children’s various types of play and the affordance provided by different plants in varied environments, as well as the specific play behaviors in these environments. The findings show that due to the biophilic nature, children are able to actively make use of existing green spaces and utilize the perceived affordance, used affordance, and shaped affordance of plants to play various types of games in high-density urban environment. Children’s interaction/play with plants increases their direct connection with nature and can basically meet their daily needs for natural experience; green spaces where there are plants with diverse species and characteristics and varied environmental factors in the surroundings can stimulate more plant affordances. Future landscape design should pay more attention to how to facilitate children’s natural and spontaneous play by creating diverse places for different play needs, introducing rich and distinctive plants, developing supporting functions of other environmental elements, encouraging challenging and adventurous play, and strengthening safety and environmental education.
Green space is an important component in urban environment, providing considerable ecosystem services to our socio-economic-cultural activities. Metrics designed to capture green space provision, supply and demand, measuring availability, accessibility, and visibility have been widely adopted to gauge progress toward achieving sustainable development goals from local to regional scales. In this article, we offer eight reflections on quantitative studies of urban green space for mapping, monitoring, modeling, and management (4M) practices in landscape design and planning. The article’s objective is to stimulate fresh and innovative thinking in the conversion of data to interventions. Eight points are made: 1) Green space mapping should be characterized in a multi-attribute conceptual model, including quantity, quality, type, and structure; 2) green space mapping sources, methods, and uses vary by definitions, approaches, and scales; 3) phenology modifies seasonal quality and quantity of urban green space; 4) spatial and temporal green space data cubes will help realize the goal of near real-time monitoring of urban green space change; 5) green space coverage reveals green space supply, but green space exposure can capture effective demand via modeling the supply–demand relationships of human–green space; 6) green space exposure measures should account for spatial, temporal, and social differences; 7) greening optimization by landscape architects and planners should consider both biophysical, biodiversity, and health benefits; and 8) urban green space management should be strategized with a long-term view. Finally, we advocate data–science–decision support systems that can help guide and promote 4M practices of urban green space. These points of reflection have broad implications for research, practice, and theory of urban green landscape design, planning, and management, and altogether constitute a set of principles that can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward strategizing optimal 4M of urban green space.
Modern cities are constantly growing and evolving. This expansion of urban development bleeds into the surrounding landscapes, causing the displacement and disturbance of native plant and animal species to remote areas where topography limits human access. As a result, metropolitan areas often become gray places with low biodiversity, elevated temperatures, poor air quality, flood issues, and lack of a local identity. Quito, Ecuador is one of the cities facing this important challenge. Perched high in the Andes, Quito is a place of great biodiversity, nevertheless the constructed landscapes are dominated by introduced species due to colonization and to the lack of availability of native species in the nursery trade. This article walks through the creation of a native nursery in Quito and the implementation of initial trial plots, a green roof, and a garden. It explains the discoveries made during the process and provides directions for future goals to reintroduce native plant species into urban environments and contemporary landscapes in order to create more sustainable cities. The goal is to help people reconnect with their natural heritage and to learn about native plants to ensure the continuity of ancestral knowledge of the natural world for future generations.
Liquid Homes: Building, Living and Other Stories of Hong Kong Fishing Villages is a research, curatorial, and design collaboration that explores the culture of Tanka people and their fluid state of living and building, presenting stories from a long overdue reading of the other Hong Kong. This essay, as an ongoing work, intends to reflect on our recent observations of the houses in Kat O fishing village by documenting the self-built additions in relation to the surrounding topography and water environment. These findings evoke an understanding of houses as „amphibious creatures” of hybrid qualities riding on the seams between land and water, and denote the notion of homes as „fluid entities”—physical yet elusive, subject to the floating identity of the community. The research intends to offer an ethnographic reading of Hong Kong coastal settlements and their building typologies, rethink building materialities by their temporal qualities and beyond the physical matter, and imagine a renewed reading on the dialectical relation between the built and the natural, and propose new ways to design sustainable architecture through the landscape.