Creative Strategies to Recover Urban Land in Disuse

[eng] Industrial land in disuse is a dual carrier of crisis and revitalization of mining cities facing decline. On the one hand, it is an object that carries urban crisis, which has many negative effects on the urban environment, economy, and society. On the other hand, it has the advantage of reuse and can be transformed into a positive factor for urban revival. The main starting point of this research is to explore the value of industrial wastelands and their reuse to promote China's mining cities out of their difficulties. The existing research on industrial lands in disuse lacks a holistic and systematic view and has insufficient knowledge of overall value of industrial lands in disuse and inadequate refining of their core values. This has led to a series of problems such as "islanding" renewal, "destructive" protection, and convergence of appearance. On account of these problems, this research applies landscape genetic theory to the conservation and renewal of industrial lands in disuse by using literature research, field survey, typology, comparative study, and systematic analysis, and analyzes the regular characteristics of industrial land in disuse clusters in China in time and space, so as to explore a more effective way for the deep excavation and scientific expression of the value of industrial lands in disuse. This research is highly interdisciplinary and exploratory. The main research contents and academic contributions: 1. The research introduces the concept of genes in biogenetics, based on the principles of "base pairing" and "DNA sequence combination" in the storage and transmission of genetic information. And based on the typology and the epistemology that interprets anthropology and the methodological basis of designing language and semiotics, we have constructed a landscape genetic theory structure with a landscape gene structure system and landscape genetic atlas as the core. 2. This research unravels the mining cities in China as the research background, clarifies the definition, classification, regional distribution, and spatial structure of mining cities, discusses the characteristics and laws of the formation and development of mining cities, and summarizes the problems and countermeasures. Then, the concept of industrial land in disuse is proposed. Its causes are analyzed and classified, and the main problems in the protection and renewal of industrial lands in disuse in China are analyzed. 3. Based on the evaluation of the value of industrial lands in disuse and their morphological and structural laws, the "unit-piece-chain-domain" landscape genetic structure system is proposed, so that any complex industrial land in disuse group can be quickly decomposed and combined under the guidance of this system. Based on this structure system, coupling mining city spaces, industrial land in disuse groups, and green space, the effective way for transformation and characteristics shaping of mining city and high-quality human living environment construction is explored. 4. This research proposes a conservation method and creative strategy for industrial land in disuse based on the genetic behavior of landscape genes. In the gene replication stage, it focuses on the protection of the authenticity and integrity of the landscape genes of industrial wasteland. In the gene translation stage, it focuses on the benign recombination and functional grafting of the landscape genes of industrial land in disuse. Three creative strategies of recombination and grafting are proposed: landscape genetic juxtaposition, landscape genetic translation, and landscape genetic symbiosis. The space of industrial land in disuse, which is contradictory and conflicting due to cultural heterogeneity and spatial and temporal differences, is reconstructed to create a landscape with regional characteristics. Huangshi City is a representative mining city in China, with a large number and many types of industrial wastelands, which has temporal continuity and spatial integrity. Based on the evaluation of the value of industrial wastelands in Huangshi City, using landscape gene theory, this research constructs the landscape gene structure system of "unit-piece-chain-domain", and builds the spatial layout of coupling urban space, industrial land in disuse clusters, and green space. Taking Tonglvshan landscape gene piece and Hanyeping Railway landscape gene chain as examples, this research maps the landscape gene atlas. Based on the landscape gene atlas and genetic behavior, protection of authenticity and integrity, recombination, and grafting measures are proposed to revitalize industrial land in disuse

Land Use Conflict Detection and Multi-Objective Optimization Based on the Productivity, Sustainability, and Livability Perspective

Land use affects many aspects of regional sustainable development, so insight into its influence is of great importance for the optimization of national space. The book mainly focuses on functional classification, spatial conflict detection, and spatial development pattern optimization based on productivity, sustainability, and livability perspectives, presenting a relevant opportunity for all scholars to share their knowledge from the multidisciplinary community across the world that includes landscape ecologists, social scientists, and geographers. The book is systematically organized into the optimization theory, methods, and practices for PLES (production–living–ecological space) around territorial spatial planning, with the overall planning of PLES as the goal and the promotion of ecological civilization construction as the starting point. Through this, the competition and synergistic interactions and positive feedback mechanisms between population, resources, ecology, environment, and economic and social development in the PLES system were revealed, and the nonlinear dynamic effects among subsystems and elements in the system identified. In addition, a series of optimization approaches for PLES is proposed

Natural and Technological Hazards in Urban Areas

Natural hazard events and technological accidents are separate causes of environmental impacts. Natural hazards are physical phenomena active in geological times, whereas technological hazards result from actions or facilities created by humans. In our time, combined natural and man-made hazards have been induced. Overpopulation and urban development in areas prone to natural hazards increase the impact of natural disasters worldwide. Additionally, urban areas are frequently characterized by intense industrial activity and rapid, poorly planned growth that threatens the environment and degrades the quality of life. Therefore, proper urban planning is crucial to minimize fatalities and reduce the environmental and economic impacts that accompany both natural and technological hazardous events

Investigating low carbon development of high-density building clusters located around railway passenger transport hubs in China

China has experienced high rates of urbanisation due to the increasing housing demand in cities, resulting in high energy consumption and high carbon dioxide emissions from buildings. Moreover, transport-related carbon dioxide emissions will also show a dramatic increase because of the growing number of vehicles in the process of the rapid urbanisation. This research aims to investigate building energy consumption and transport-related carbon dioxide emissions due to mobilities of users from buildings and propose strategies to reduce their energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions in cities. The main contributions of this research are two-fold. Firstly, in the theoretical aspect,this research fills the research gap on the combination of the carbon dioxide emissions quantification with buildings and the transport. Secondly, in the practical perspective, this research presents examples study of the carbon dioxide emissions quantification, analyses potential factors affecting energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, and provides strategies for low carbon city development. This study adopts an on-site survey, questionnaires, modelling simulation, and regression analysis to explore the situations of carbon dioxide emissions in three cases, with each representing one typical location type. The study provides an understanding of the low carbon city development, investigates energy demand and carbon dioxide emissions and compares energy demand with the simulation; it examines factors including street orientation, the layout of building clusters, overshadows, and urban heat island effects with carbon dioxide emissions from building sectors. Meanwhile, this study regresses modal splits with three aspects relating to socioeconomic characteristics, travel patterns from respondents, and self-evaluation on travelling. All of these provides implications for both theoretical and practical research on low carbon city development

Rural-to-urban resettlement and resettled villagers’ post-resettlement adaptation in Hangzhou, China

In recent years, rural-to-urban resettlement as a specific form of urbanization and its long-lasting impact on landless villagers have garnered increasing scholarly and policy attention in China. Urbanization through resettlement has thus become a potent tool for the Chinese government to embrace the new-type urbanization, which highlights the integrated urban-rural development and the citizenization of the rural population in urban areas. During this process, resettled villagers were physically relocated into concentrated resettlement communities and underwent an arduous adaptation process to the host city. This dissertation adopts an integrated conceptual framework to analyze decade-long resettlement practices in Hangzhou, China. Through an explanatory sequential mixed methods approach design, this dissertation sheds light on how urbanization through resettlement unfolds and how resettled villagers adapt to urban society. More specifically, it explores the following questions. What are the spatial characteristics of resettlement communities regarding material deprivation? How is space socially produced in resettlement communities? How has China’s property rights system influenced resettlement practices and resettled villagers’ post-resettlement adaptation? This dissertation follows the article-based format, and the three articles together offer a step-wise approach to untangling the complexities of rural-to-urban resettlement in China. The first article investigates what dimension of resettlement communities by focusing on their spatial characteristics. It invokes the concept of deprivation and aims to establish indices of multiple deprivations (IMDs) for resettlement communities. In doing so, the article uses accessibility as a proxy and integrates the space syntax approach with multi-criteria decision analysis to construct the IMDs of concentrated resettlement communities in Hangzhou, China. The utilized data consists of street networks obtained from OpenStreetMap, Point of Interest (POI) gathered through Amap API, and interviews conducted within the local communities. The findings suggest that material deprivation may not be the primary rationale for residential segregation of resettlement communities in urban areas. In addition, the accessibility to different services reflects diverse material deprivation patterns of resettlement communities. Moreover, the perceived deprivation of various stakeholders, such as resettled villagers, planners, and local government officials, may lead to different results of the IMDs. The diverse criteria or domains of deprivation contribute differently to the deprivation, which requires a tailored treatment strategy when constructing IMDs, such as the sensitivity analysis used in this research. It is recommended to incorporate perceived deprivation measurement as the essential component of pre-resettlement assessment. The second article further explores how space is produced in resettlement communities. The production of concentrated resettlement communities (CRCs) to accommodate resettled villagers and facilitate their post-resettlement adaptation creates a unique urban phenomenon in China. However, existing research has insufficiently unpacked the evolution of the production process. Building on the theory of space production, this article proposes a dynamic spatial-temporal conceptual framework to examine the process of space production. Drawing on interviews with residents, local planners, policy makers, and academics, as well as large sample questionnaire surveys, the article offers an empirical lens on how CRCs have evolved and how landless farmers have adapted to the host city. It first finds that CRCs in Hangzhou have three typologies in terms of spatial layout and built form. Secondly, resettled villagers in early CRCs are confronted with economic challenges but maintain well social relations. Their shared collectivism is conducive to their spatial adaptation. In recent CRCs, strict planning and community management have further limited resettled villagers' spontaneous attempts to reshape space to support their adaptation. The third article delves into why it is challenging to achieve inclusive rural-to-urban resettlement by focusing on the property rights regime in China. While the Chinese government intends to use resettlement to address the ambiguous property rights in rural areas, resettlement projects may deviate from the presupposed ideal path of achieving equitable property rights through property rights rearrangements. This article aims to unpack the complexity of property rights embedded in rural-to-urban resettlement based on the empirical case of Hangzhou. Based on documentary analysis, field observation, in-depth interviews, and questionnaire surveys, the article argues that the ambiguous property rights system of rural land cannot be fully addressed through rural-to-urban transition, and the coexistence of private, collective, formal and informal property rights systems is inevitable in urban areas without targeted policy remedies. The findings identify some main obstacles to the ideal transition of property rights systems. First, the resettled villagers are excluded from market participation by inadequate compensation through planning mechanisms. Second, resettlement communities suffer from the remaining rurality that challenges the enforcement of formal institutions and the governance of communal resources in the urban system. Third, the collective-retained land is an innovative but compromised institution devised by the local government to achieve a fair property rights rearrangement through resettlement, but its effectiveness is weakened by the politics at the village level. In summary, this dissertation provides a detailed reading of rural-to-urban resettlement practices and a nuanced understanding of resettled villagers’ post-resettlement adaptation in contemporary China. More importantly, the findings can have important policy implications for sustainable urban-rural development in China regarding offering better locational choices for resettlement communities, accommodating the spatial demands of resettled villagers, and achieving equitable property rights for the affected

Assessing the social sustainability of Chinese urban neigbourhoods: a case study of Shenzhen

There is an increasing concern arising from China’s recent urban growth in terms of sustainability from environmental, economic and social perspectives. Huge numbers of new Chinese urban neighbourhoods have been built during the past 20 years with great spatial and social changes in this process compared with the past. However, little attention has been paid to assess the planning and development of these new neighbourhoods against social sustainable criterion. This research aims to evaluate the social sustainability of new Chinese neighbourhoods and discuss its association with patterns of urban form and related planning processes. A new conceptual framework of social sustainability was developed from the relevant sustainable research based upon the Western experiences and adapted to the Chinese urban context. It included three layers, resident’s basic needs, inner social networks and the entire community development for which detailed indicators could be generated as the basis for empirical social sustainability assessments. An embedded case study methodology was applied to Shenzhen, a new megacity rising from China’s rapid urbanisation process. The methodology consisted of two-phase case studies and utilised multiple survey methods. The city-level focused on understanding the macro-context policies related to neighbourhood development process and the general spatial characteristics of urban form, in which typical patterns could be identified for neighbourhood case selection. Then neighbourhood-level case studies in the Houhai-Dengliang area were used to appraise their levels of social sustainability. The analysis suggests that there is nexus between urban form and social sustainability, with the recently emerging highly-segmented and over-intensified developments being the least socially sustainable form. Defects in the current neighbourhood development mechanisms are further identified based on the clear evidence. The research recommends that the ‘site scale’ and ‘density’ needs to be effectively controlled for new neighbourhoods, within medium ranges, if the best level of social sustainability are to be achieved. For many existing neighbourhoods, evidence also indicates that adopting a collaborative planning approach can be a pathway towards a more socially sustainable development

Production of Commodities and Iron Economy in Early China: A Case Study of a Western Han Iron Foundry at Taicheng

How the exchange of commodities and control over resources shaped the social world is a major concern in anthropology. In the domain of history, the form and structure of market economy during the Han period is also a long debated issue. Consequently, the study of imperial control over commodities within an anthropological framework is a promising avenue that sheds new light on debates about the Han commodity economy. This dissertation addresses the production and distribution system of the Han iron industry in order to investigate the nature of commodities and resource control. This project integrates metallurgical and zooarchaeological approaches to analyzing manufacturing remains at an iron foundry site named Taicheng, as well as iron objects from various cemeteries in the Guanzhong basin, Shaanxi, the capital area of the Western Han Empire (202 BCE-9 CE). The results provide new evidence demonstrating the “commodity economy” of iron in the capital area, in fact, functioned as a multi-level network system. Even within the same category of iron products, the degree of commodification and the scope of market networks widely varied in the Western Han period, a fact that has been overlooked in previous literature. In addition, the transportation of iron goods to the capital created a massive market network connecting different parts of the Empire and generated the momentum for the capital to dominate over its eastern territory.Anthropolog