Landscapes for Adaptation Evidence from China

006 Foreword

008 Preface

010 Acknowledgments

Part 1

012 NARRATIVES OF ADAPTATION

Part 2

028 CASE STUDIES IN ADAPTATION

032 BIOTIC Adaptation

    Habitat Restoration

    Wetland Restoration

    Biodiversity Enhancement

120 ABIOTIC Adaptation

    Ecological Hydrology

    Stormwater Management

    Ecological Remediation

210 CULTURAL Adaptation

    Agrarian Urbanism

    Vernacular Preservation

    Pedestrian Connectivity

298 SYNTHETIC Adaptation

    Sponge City

    New Urbanity

    Negative Planning

Part 3

388 ATLAS OF ADAPTATIONS

Part 4 

482 DECLARATION OF INTENTIONS

494 Bibliography

This publication emerged from ongoing conversations with Kongjian Yu over the past two decades and my growing fascination with the new typologies of landscape architecture that he has realized over that time. Kongjian was characteristically generous when we took up this project, sharing his insights and experiences without prejudicing my own views on the work. He graciously endured hours and hours of interviews over many months, as well as no small number of naive questions and tentative propositions from me. My respect for him has only grown through these encounters, as he has remained humble in the face of our current challenges yet unabashedly optimistic about the role of landscape in our collective futures. We have benefited from numerous contributions by Kongjian's extraordinary team at Turenscape, especially the collegial support of the always resourceful Huimin Jia.

We are deeply indebted to our friend Fritz Steiner, who generously agreed to write the foreword for this volume. Fritz's extensive conversations with Kongjian and Turenscape are evident in that foreword, as is Fritz's unique capacity to situate Kongjian's work in a broader arc of landscape architecture and planning practices.

This publication and the research project it came from would have been unimaginable and unrealized without the essential contributions of my longtime collaborator, Boya Zhang. Boya enthusiastically took up the topic and mobilized it from its earliest conceptual frameworks through research, writing, editing, and production. He was characteristically both imaginative in working through various intellectual frames and equally tireless while working through the mountain of material assembled for the project. Thanks also to Scott Cohen, who introduced me to Boya and recommended him as a doctoral candidate years ago. Scott correctly anticipated that Boya would be both a remarkable scholar in his own right and an essential contributor to my research agenda.

Thanks again to longtime research associate Charles "Chardie" Gaillard, who contributed consequentially to research, writing, editing, and essential aspects of narrative development. I have come to rely upon Charlie's rare combination of intellectual curiosity and rhetorical fluency to inform many of my projects. Thanks also to Michael Rock, who introduced me to Charlie and recommended him as someone uniquely capable of contributing to my research team, as he has done over the past many years. Thanks also to the amazingly talented Liwei Shen, who joined our team as a research assistant for the project and contributed her incredible eye and equally fluent hand across various drawings, maps, and photographs in the volume.

Ultimately, this publication was only possible with the commitment of Gordon Goff, Ashley Simone, and their talented team at Axiomatic Editions. Gordon grasped the project's potential from our first discussion, and Ashley has been an impeccable advocate for the project, improving it immeasurably over its gestation. Finally, I am ultimately indebted to the talented Siena Scarff and her team at Siena Scarff Design for their detailed design and careful craft of the book.

When I was studying human ecology with the anthropologist Yehudi Cohen, he noted that adaptation is the ability of populations to survive and to reproduce. He also observed that "technology is the fulcrum of adaptation." Technology has been defined as knowledge dealing with the applied sciences. Adaptation requires learning new technologies and evolving them. Landscape architecture is an applied science and art that should play a central role in climate adaptation. Landscapes are, after all, where adaptations in built environments happen. Adaptation is the process of change through which a species becomes better suited to its environment. Landscape architects help our species fit with our environments. An understanding of ecology helps the landscape architect make connections between natural and cultural systems. Ecology reveals the wounds of the world. Repairing the damages of the past is a necessary part of climate adaptation.

To face the significant challenges of climate change and to provide models for hope, we need examples of restoration, learning, and survival. We have many challenges that we need to convert to opportunities, such as: how, through creative interventions, do we heal the habitats of other species and of valuable wetlands; how do we enhance biodiversity; how do we foster abiotic adaptation, stormwater management, and ecological remediation; how do cultures adapt as we improve pedestrian and bicycle connectivity in contemporary cities; how do we reenvision cities as sponges; how do we create a new ecological urbanity; and how do we protect environmental resources? Fortunately, we have many examples for how all these challenges were made opportunities, all undertaken by one firm, Turenscape, led by landscape architect Kongjian Yu.

Turenscape and Yu have realized an impressive array of climate adaptation works in China over the past three decades. An ancient culture with a dynamic present, China is at the forefront of addressing the threats of climate change with Turenscape leading with many projects illustrating hopeful possibilities. Their pioneering work is presented in the pages that follow. Many lessons are embedded in these case studies. As Charles Waldheim and Boya Zhang make clear, the possible consequences go beyond the positive impacts in China. They explore potential opportunities in a variety of vulnerable places, including Dhaka, Bangladesh; São Paulo, Brazil; and Lagos, Nigeria.

Waldheim and Zhang offer a "declaration of intentions" for bottom-up strategies of landscape adaptation. They underscore the urgency of climate change that will require us to live up to the name of our species and indeed be wise. As seen in the work of Turenscape, landscape adaptations require smart policies derived from knowledge and wisdom. The necessary adaptations also require landscape architects to be bold as Frederick Law Olmsted and Ian McHarg were—and as Kongjian Yu is.

I first met Kongjian remotely when he was translating my book The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning. I was humbled and honored by the Chinese translation. What could such a venerable culture learn from a text written for a North American audience, I wondered? I asked him this when we met in his cramped Beijing office in 2005. At the time, a relatively small space full of dedicated colleagues and students housed both Turenscape and his Peking University program and functioned as office, studio, classroom, and publishing house. A stack of other North American and European landscape architecture and planning books were being translated. "We have much to learn from the West," Kongjian answered. His small academic program has since grown in size and stature, along with his publishing activities. Turenscape is now among the most significant landscape architecture firms in the world, completing hundreds of projects in cities worldwide. Now, it is time to learn much from Kongjian Yu.

Fritz Steiner

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA