The Growth Pattern of Taizhou City Based on Ecological Infrastructure
Project Introduction
Taizhou City Project also known as a project "against planning" received two professional awards in 2005: ASLA Honor Award, Planning and Analysis and ALSA Design Honor Award.This project was incepted by Dr. Kongjian Yu and presided by Turenscape and Peking University. Time Magazine recently celebrated Kongjian Yu's ecologically and culturally sensitive design as "A Force of Nature", positioning him as "China's pre-eminent landscape architect" ( Time Magazine , 17 April 2006, pp58-60). This award winning project, The Negative Approach to Urban Development in Taizhou City, illustrates Kongjian Yu's thinking about internationality and identity in Chinese contemporary landscape architecture and urban design. Dr Yu believes landscape architecture must address major challenges in the coming decades.One of these challenges being that of cultural identity. He advocates that Landscape architecture is well positioned to deal with this issue due to its intrinsic association with natural systems and its roots in agricultural tradition. Urbanization and globalization processes are so fast and overwhelming, and suggest that a 'negative approach' should be taken against conventional development planning. That is, landscape architects and planners should lead the way to identify and design an ecological infrastructure that safeguards ecological processes and cultural heritage, before the land development planning stage.
Taizhou is located at the southeast coast of China in the Zhejiang province , with a total area of 9411 square kilometers, and a population of 5.5 million. Among them only 0.7 million people are now living in the urban area. It is estimated that the urban population in the city will increase to 0.9 million in 2010, 1.3 million in 2020, and 1.5 million in 2030. Under the influence of the monsoon climate and being adjacent to the East Sea, flooding has continued being a major hazard. As an adaptation to the storm water and flood problem, the landscape has been shaped into a unique form featured with a network of water courses that integrate natural water systems, wetlands and man-made ditches, as well as cultural heritages such as bridges, dikes, dams, and vernacular landscapes. This area has long been famous for the rice, fishery and citrus. It is also critical to keep in mind that arable and developable flat land is very limited in this area. Growth Pattern In the east coast area, where this project is located, the cities grow even much faster. In this process, land is taken over indiscriminately for infrastructure construction and urban development. As a result, the wetlands and water system on the land were destroyed and polluted, native habitats and biodiversity are getting lost, the hazards of flood, drought hazards and diseases are increasing, and the cultural identity of the landscape is getting lost. Hence, the water network landscape, which has been effective in safeguarding the agricultural processes for thousands of years, is now facing the challenge of being destroyed by the speedy urbanization process beginning in the earlier 1990s. The wetlands have been filled, rivers have been straightened and channelized, cultural heritages that are not listed as protected historical relics have been destroyed, and visual and recreational experiences have been totally ignored.
Project Brief
Keeping the fast rate of urban growth in mind this project was created to guide it in such a fashion that minimum amount of damage is posed to the existing natural environment and ecosystems. The project treats land as a "living system" and developed an ecological infrastructure (EI) to guide and frame the urban sprawl.
Ecological Infrastructure (EI)
The EI is defined as the structural landscape network that is composed of the critical landscape elements and spatial patterns that are of strategic significance in safeguarding the integrity and identity of the natural and cultural landscape and securing sustainable ecosystem services,protecting cultural heritage and recreational experience. (www.asla.org)
Planning Regional EI
step 1 Three categories of processes are targeted to be safeguarded by the ecological infrastructure(EI):
The Abiotic Processes: the main focus is flood control and storm water management.
The Biotic Processes: native species and biodiversity conservation.
The Cultural Processes: including heritage protection and recreational need.
step 2 For each of the targeted processes discussed above "security patterns" were identified. The security patterns are composed of the elements and spatial positions that are strategically important in safeguarding the different processes of the landscape. Three security levels- low, medium and high - are used to define the quality of the security patterns in safeguarding each of the targeted processes.
step 3 [B]Scenarios For Urban Growth Patterns [/B] Using the three EI alternatives listed in step 2 as framing structure, scenarios of regional urban growth pattern were stimulated using GIS [B]The Adjusted Sprawl Scenario: Urban Pattern based on the EI at a Lower Security Level
At a low security level, the EI will allow the city to accommodate a maximum population of 5 millions, and yet still keep a minimum critical landscape structure to safeguard the natural and cultural processes that are strategically important for the integrity and identity of the landscape, and provide minimum ecosystem services. The advantages of the adjusted sprawl scenario lie in its efficiency in urban development. The EI plays a connecting element for cycling and pedestrian, as well as provide recreation and other ecosystem services.
The Aggregrated Scenario: Urban Pattern based on the EI at a Medium Security Level[/B] At a medium security level, the EI will allow the city to accommodate a maximum population of 3 millions and keep a good landscape structure to safeguard the natural and cultural processes that are strategically important for the integrity and identity of the landscape, and provide sufficient ecosystem services. The advantages for this scenario lie in its harmonious state integrating natural systems protection, cultural and social benefits and economic efficiency.
The Scattered Scenario: Urban Pattern based on the EI at a Higher Security Level
At a higher security level, the EI will allow the city to accommodate a maximum population of 1.5 millions and keep the best landscape structure to safeguard the natural and cultural processes that are strategically important for the integrity and identity of the landscape, and provide the most possible ecosystem services. The main disadvantage for this scenario lies in its potential inefficient urban land use and ineconomic infrastructures development.
step 4 Comparative impact evaluations were made for these scenarios by a planning committee composed of decision makers of the city, planning experts from all over the country, stake holders who are represented by officials from various functional departments of the Taizhou city government (including the departments of agriculture, water management, forestry, industry, tourism, finance, transportation, public affairs, security, culture education, tax, etc.), and representatives of individual villages who originally owned the land, representatives of real estate developers and representatives of investors who are eagerly waiting to get the right to develop the land.
step 5 One of the three urban pattern scenarios was finally selected as the most feasible by the decision makers, after a long time and multiple brainstorms among the planning committee. As expected the Aggregated Scenario, which is based on the medium quality EI, was considered the more balanced and less difficult to be realized.
step 6 Green lines were drawn to define and safeguard the EI protection. These basic green lines are now being presented to the people's congress of Taizhou City for legislation procedure. After being passed by the congress, these green lines will become the first of their kind in China to protect the regional ecological infrastructure by the municipal law.
Innovations:
The project is a good example of collaborate planning where different stakeholders and concern groups will be identified and will be given a chance to evaluate and decided the final model for future urban growth Ecological infrastructure has been used as the key to guide future development. This is quite in contrast to the traditional approach, where green belts are planned to stop urban sprawl. This usually fails to curb the problem because green belts are usually planned more artificially and arbitrarily then the urban development itself The project also made a conscious attempt to protect all the important processes (resources) Project is a good model for establishing the point that sustainable development is possible by wisely arranged urban development and land use pattern Although one can not help notice that there is still a trade-off between environmental protection (best at a high security level) and economic development (best at a low security level)
Evaluations:
As the project is very new and limited information is available in print it is difficult to assess what kinds of problems and delays the project will face once it will become open for discussion to the planning committee EI has been proposed as the means by which development will proceed. Will this approach lead to more inclusive definition of sustainable development---one that includes within its goals sustaining biodiversity and healthy natural ecosystems?
References:
http://www.asla.org/awards/2005/05winners/entry_075.html
http://www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/features/events/dls.html
http://www.zhb.gov.cn/english/SEPA/newsletter/2000-02.htm
http://www.zhejiang.gov.cn/node2/node1619/node1622/node1810/userobject13ai707.htm
English/news/n_view.asp?id=102 Sadahisa Kato, WFCON 697C presentation, December 6 2005 Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Related Link：http://www.people.umass.edu/jfa/greenurbanism/rchaudhry/index.html
