A Creative ‘NanoTown’: Framing Sustainable Development Scenarios with Local People in Calabria

This chapter intends to be both scientifically sound and narratively engaging, given the richness of the work done in Gagliato as experienced by the authors. As a matter of fact, besides the research done remotely, the authors gathered in Gagliato in July 2017 for a one-week participatory design workshop, getting to know the local context, talking with local people, materialising the focus groups implemented on site in future visions of sustainable development. Gagliato is a hilly town located in the province of Catanzaro in Calabria, overlooking the Ionian Sea. The chapter introduces a theoretical section regarding current debates on transdisciplinary research and the reason why Gagliato has been considered a suitable case to test it. The enabling conditions and potential barriers to achieve meaningful transdisciplinary outcomes and consequently tangible positive urban transformation of the experience of Gagliato will be discussed in relationship to the various phases of the project.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Reframing China’s heritage conservation discourse. Learning by testing civic engagement tools in a historic rural village

Urban heritage conservation in China has been subject to severe criticism, although there is now a sense of paradigm shift. Charters, declarations and agendas had the merit of filtering down the international discourse on heritage, while more innovative approaches were arising. The UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape recommendation, offers a new angle from which to observe this process of change. The underlying argument of this article is that HUL can provide a platform to achieve greater sustainability in transforming historic sites in China, particularly in rural areas, overcoming, at the same time, the easy shortcut of the East–West discourse of difference in respect to heritage conservation. This is primarily due to the shifting focus from the materiality of heritage to its role in sustainable development with increasing attention on the role played by local communities. By presenting the proposal for the protection of the historic rural village of Shuang Wan in the Jiangsu Province, this paper aims to reflect on this shift showing its advantages but also some of the risks. These are inherent in a discourse of heritage in danger of legitimising mere pro-growth development approaches, if not accompanied by participatory practices considerate of the specific social reality of China

Positioning regional design in chinese territorial spatial planning: an exploratory project in the yangtze river delta megacity region

By restructuring its planning system and integrating competences of land resource and water management, environmental conservation, agriculture, as well as spatial planning, under a same Ministry of Natural Resources in 2018, China ambitioned to definitively turn the page on inconsistent and sectoral planning practices. However, existing planning instruments are still linked to administrative boundaries and remain statutory and regulatory in nature, which makes them inadequate to address complex and dynamic megacity regions that span across different administrative entities. The Yangtze River Delta megacity region is the subject of an ambitious integration plan which focuses on economic coordination and urban services, however, there is still no coherent vision on its spatial development at the territorial scale. This article presents the “Jiangnan Park,” a university-led and design-driven research project focusing on the vast triangular plain between cities of Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Suzhou. Using the encompassing metaphor of regional “park” and applying the emerging method of regional design, this project combines mapping, visualization, design strategies, and workshop techniques to elaborate a development vision for this historically and ecologically sensitive area. As a pioneering case of regional design in China, this project exemplifies how the use of cross-scale and cross-sectoral collaborative methods can inform the development of integrative strategies for complex megacity regions

Water biedt steden kansen

Turnhout diende als levend laboratorium voor een studie over hoe waterberging de structuur en het aangezicht van onze steden kan verbeteren.status: publishe

Historic landscape and water heritage of Suzhou beyond the tourist gaze

Since the 1980s, the city branding of Suzhou has increasingly capitalised on its cultural heritage. Structures and places such as classical gardens, historic streets, city walls and gates were turned into cultural ‘goods’ – being protected, repurposed or reconstructed by heritage and tourism sectors. Such ‘Heritage’ has been vigorously promoted by tourism industries to catch and monopolise the ‘tourist gaze’. This selective perception of historical relics has resulted in excessive commodification of ‘Heritage’, while ignoring the immaterial and less perceptual ‘heritage’ currently under threat from development and urbanisation. Drawing a conceptual distinction between ‘Heritage’ and ‘heritage’, this chapter examines the role of water in forming the regional identity of Suzhou – its water ‘heritage’. From the canal network in the walled city to the polder system in the rural lands, the man-made water landscape of Suzhou not only embodies indigenous techniques for hydraulic engineering, but also reflects the ancestral relationship between water and social life. Drawing on historical maps, documents and existing studies, this chapter provides a panoramic view of Suzhou’s historical reconciliation with water and aims to unveil less well-known, undervalued and residual historic landscapes, thereby elucidating their cultural significance to the regional identity of Suzhou, beyond the tourist gaze

From planning to profiling : Reactivating characteristic watermarks to structure the Flemish territory

Flanders distinguishes itself in Europe by its flat and dispersedly urbanized territory. If water was originally the main spatial structure, its role has been minimized over the last two centuries with the manipulation of the hydrologic network, the overlay of infrastructures, and a generalized urbanization. The development of a preventive and decentralized water policy, synonymous with making room for the water, could however, potentially reactivate the structuring capacity of water. Reporting on design investigation in the urban region of Genk, this paper demonstrates how the search of space for water highlights and reinterprets the micro-topographic features of the landscape. Besides dealing with pressing water issues, the design of space for water can indeed simultaneously unlock the latent structure that underpins Flanders's (sub)urbanization and thereby play a key role in a requalification that redirects its development into more sustainable avenues

Delta management in evolution : a comparative review of the Yangtze River Delta and Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta

This paper aims to compare the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Delta in Europe and the Taihu Basin part of the Yangtze River Delta in China from a long-term historical perspective. Urbanized deltas are among the most prosperous and populated regions in the world, but also the most vulnerable. To cope with growing uncertainty, their systematic comparison has become instrumental in building mutual learning on the theory and practice of spatial planning and water resource management in such vulnerable contexts. Based on a systematic comparative mapping approach of Delta Urbanism with critical review of policies, this research highlights important similarities between these two deltas in terms of physical characteristics, dense occupation, and management history evolving from a decentralized polder-based system to a centralized control model, and a recent adoption of integrated and adaptive water management strategies. On the other hand, the comparison reveals distinct management focuses in current delta plans, as well as contrasting approaches to public participation and historical hydraulic landscapes. It is found from this comparative study that, beyond the socio-cultural specificities that can explain the distinct management practice of each region, the systematic use of mapping as a visualization and communication tool would facilitate integrative and adaptive delta management

Turnhout als (regen)water lab

status: publishe

Taipu canal as a regional spine: a prototypical approach to territorial planning

Since 2018, the integrated regional development of the Yangtze River Delta has been subjected as a national strategy to intensify the interconnection between its cities. However, the questions of open space conservation and planning have so far remained essentially quantitative and strongly informed by regulatory and top-down principles. Focusing on the vast green heart between Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, this design-driven research project hypothesizes that Taipu Canal can be upgraded from its current technical role into a civic spine that frames new developments and articulates the rich diversity of open spaces, ecosystems, historic water towns and villages. The research adopts a crossscale method of “contextual prototypes” that combines sampling, typological classification, and prototypical design explorations in pilot projects. A reflective phase zooms out to critically assess how these prototypical strategies can be systemized as structuring principles at the regional scale. The conclusion of the article discusses how this prototypical approach offers an opportunity to inductively complement the top-down Chinese territorial planning system, which needs to cope with increasingly complex conditions and vaster scales

Ruimte voor water in de stad: naar een meer geïntegreerde steden- en waterbouwkundige benadering

Dit artikel geeft een overzicht van het lopende interdisciplinaire project van de KU Leuven en de PH Limburg ‘Water onderzoek in Vlaams verstedelijkte landschappen’. Met de opkomst van een preventief en gedecentraliseerd waterbeleid in Europa en Vlaanderen de afgelopen jaren, wordt waterbeheer steeds meer synoniem met de nood aan ruimte voor water creëren. Het vereist dan ook een intense samenwerking tussen de (lang gescheiden) disciplines van hydrologie en ruimtelijke ordening. Hoewel nieuwe beleidsinstrumenten voor een integraal waterbeleid onlangs zijn geïntroduceerd, blijft hun uitvoering in de complexe ruimtelijke en institutionele context van Vlaanderen een uitdaging. Om hieraan tegemoet te komen, onderzoekt dit project nieuwe ontwikkelingsconcepten en -methodes voor een meer geïntegreerde stedenbouwen waterbouwkundige benadering. Met de case van Turnhout ter illustratie, focust dit artikel meer specifiek op de mogelijke wisselwerkingen tussen stedelijke drainage-infrastructuur en ruimtelijke vraagstukken in sterk verstedelijkte gebieden.status: publishe