THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
ACTORS AND NETWORKS
A conference on landscape urbanism, arranged by the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at Beijing University in the autumn of 2009, attracted a lot of attention and a huge number of attendees.2 This gathering, titled ‘Landscape Urbanism in China’, was part of the Chinese Landscape Architecture Education Conference & Landscape Architects Congress, and had over 600 participants, including academics, planning professionals, government officials and practitioners from many international design firms. Among the keynote speakers were American professor and architect Charles Waldheim and American regional planner Frederic Steiner as well as Chinese practitioners and academics, among them landscape architect Yu Kongjian. The conference’s title, however, was contentious. According to Li Dihua, a researcher and urban ecologist at Beijing University, the name for the conference was chosen because of the collaboration with Harvard, which uses the term
‘landscape urbanism’. In China the term is rarely used, says Li, the term is regarded as too diffuse, and its translation into Chinese language also creates ambiguity; ‘Forget all about landscape urbanism when you talk to Chinese professionals. Emphasize the methods, then it becomes interesting.’ (pers. comm., 2012).
In China it is rare that landscape architects are involved in the strategic decisions to prepare land for development. These decisions are taken by planners and engineers (Stokman, 2012). University degrees in (landscape/urban) planning and design at Chinese universities are distinct and in professional practice there is a clear divide between planning and design. Landscape architecture in China used to be called landscape gardening (fengjing yuanlin,
风景园林),
with the Chinesegarden tradition at its core, but over the last decade, professionals of landscape architecture, many of them returning from an education abroad, have tried to expand and broaden landscape architecture to include a larger scale and a more diverse mode of operation. The role of landscape architecture in Chinese urban planning practice is currently under debate, with questions such as how to integrate advanced planning knowledge and science with cultural traditions and practices, how to reinterpret the Chinese garden so it better matches with ecological concerns and how to combine scientific landscape planning and creative landscape design. Chinese landscape architect Yu Kongjian is one of the main voices in these debates. Like American landscape urbanists, Yu argues that landscape architecture ought to play a larger role within urban planning.
Leading the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at Beijing University and running the office Turenscape, Yu is involved in both research and practice. Yu’s work directs attention to the value of the ordinary productive landscape, China’s agricultural tradition and the human/land relationship. The name of his office deliberately directs attention to the land and its people—tu 土 means earth and soil, ren
人
means people. For Yu landscape architecture is an ‘art of survival’ (Yu, 2006). He says; ‘My understanding of landscape is that of geography, more about land and ecosystems than about gardens and ornamental horticulture.’ (Yu cited in Steiner, 2012, p. 109). Yu studied landscape gardening at Beijing Forest University in the 1980s and later, from 1992 to 1995, pursued a Doctor of Design degree at Harvard with the regional planner Carl Steinitz as his tutor and ecologist and professor Forman as one of his teachers. When he returned to China, inspired by his experiences in the US, he established an ‘ecology-based approach to landscape architecture’ with a practice operating across scales, from the regional scale to the scale of the building site (Steiner, 2012, p. 106).As an alternative to conventional urban development that often removes all existing structures on site to make way for new construction—a tabula rasa—Yu’s approach seeks to interweave the existing landscape with the newly built. Yu says that such an alternative approach could have many names, such as ‘agricultural urbanism, landscape urbanism, water urbanism, sustainable urbanism, green urbanism, and certainly ecological urbanism.’ (Yu cited in Saunders, 2012, p. 222). He uses the term the ‘negative planning approach’, fan guihua,
反规划, literally
meaning ‘against planning’ (Yu et al., 2008). Here landscape structures and ecological systems constitute the frame for urban development, rather than built infrastructure and population projections, as in theconventional economic development-oriented planning approach (Ibid).3 To operationalize the negative approach, Yu uses ‘ecological infrastructure’ (EI), which is a widely recognized planning tool to preserve or restore ecological networks with strategies ranging from protective and defensive when ecological networks are relatively intact, to offensive and opportunistic when those networks are fragmented (Ahern, 2007). The idea of ecological infrastructure is based on concepts from landscape ecology, eco city studies and conservation biology (Yu et al., 2008). Yu Kongjian defines EI as a ‘structural landscape network’ that consists of
‘critical landscape elements and spatial patterns’ that can preserve the integrity of the natural and cultural landscape, and thus secure ecosystem services, protect cultural heritage and provide recreational functions (Yu, 2010, p. 62). By overlayering security patterns—understood as areas with
‘critical significance in safeguarding and controlling certain ecological processes’—EI can be developed at various quality levels, which can be used to guide urban growth (Yu et al., 2008, p. 945). While researchers are currently exploring EI across scales, and ecological security has become an important research area in China, EI planning is not yet a type of planning that is required by legislation (Ibid).
Wulijie new town
Turenscape’s plan for Wulijie in Hubei province, exemplifies a new town based on EI. The new town, located in the outskirts of Wuhan next to a high tech area, is expected to accommodate 100,000 people when completed in 2022 (a 22 km2 large site with a 10 km2 urban core) (Saunders, 2012). The Wulijie plan is structured around the water systems and landforms that exist on the site. The plan expresses an appreciation for the existing landscape, both in productive and aesthetic terms; the paddy fields, lotus ponds and fish ponds are seen as part of an important vernacular heritage. By strictly controlling land development, through compact and dense development, the plan seeks to reduce land disturbance, maintain the existing productive landscape and protect the water system (Mo and Li, 2011). The water network and the green space structure are intended to retain and clean storm water on site to minimize the impact on the regional water system. Except for storm water management, the EI contains productive fields (lotus, rice, fish), space for recreational use and pedestrian and bike paths that link the new town to the regional public transit system. Through community farm activities—
productive agricultural fields and cultivation of vegetables in community gardens—the plan seeks to provide opportunities for employment and promote community integration, communication and participation. The plan also seeks to influence the attitude of developers towards giving more attention to landscape structures (Ibid).
The plan for Wulijie draws on Western ecological planning practice and landscape ecology; McHarg’s layering method, Forman’s ecological analysis (patch, corridor and matrix) and Steinitz’s spatial analysis (security patterns). The methods are adapted to deal with the challenges specific to the Chinese setting, such as floods, shortage of land, high density and rapid urban expansion and inspiration is also drawn from the vernacular landscape and its simple and low-tech principles. The material I have found on the Wulijie new town, however, does not mention much about the mechanisms needed to implement the plan to ensure that the plan is not compromised, as often is the case with conventional land use plans that are modified by construction-project oriented processes.
Yu’s work is controversial in China. His approach is regarded as Westernized and his ‘negative planning approach’ has raised a lot of debate in Chinese planning circles. Many planners do not agree—they see planning as a balanced practice where landscape planning and urban planning are given equal weight. In their view there is no need for a reversed approach to planning. There is another side to the ‘negative approach’, however, one of polemics, in which the approach is used rhetorically to raise debate. Yu seeks to convince Chinese mayors of the value of taking an alternative approach. He wants to promote landscape architecture to government officials who usually turn to engineers and who follow the conventional, economic development-oriented approach to urban planning. Yu is a communicator, and through his position as a practitioner and an academic, and through his international recognition, he speaks both to the public and to academia (Steiner, 2012).4 Yu’s work is ‘more strategic than scientific’, says American professor of landscape architecture Kristina Hill, belonging more to the rhetorical realm, prioritizing decision-making over scientific investigation (Hill, 2012, p.
149).
4.5
CULTURAL CONTEXT