Live with Water

Abstract

In the past few decades, urbanisation in China has been witnessed with great speed. While this has brought a rocketing economy and improved citizens’ average living standards, it does not come without any expense. Such intensive urban sprawling and industrialization in China has added up a great risk to upcoming climate challenges, especially bringing about water issues such as flooding, water pollution and drinking water scarcity that are closely linked with citizens’ safety, well-being and future prosperity. Though many policies and initiatives have been proposed to mitigate these water issues, few of them can solve the issues systemically.

Hence, with the Lake Chao Basin as a backdrop, the project aims at tackling these water issues from the perspective of systemic design and thus proposes a 'water- oriented urban development'. Through the maximization method, a pattern language for 'water-oriented urban development' is constructed. This set of pattern language not only provides solutions to address the main problems regarding water quantity, water quality and water safety in the region but also is targeted at bringing about a systemic change in the area by intervening on deep leverage points.

To illustrate the implementation of the pattern language, a multi-scale framework for the Lake Chao Basin is created, with the vision for Tanchong River Basin 2030 as a strategic project. It shows how the implementation of the pattern language could reshape the landscape on different scales, engage various stakeholders and promote a sustained commitment to the water system among citizens. This will also provide transferable knowledge to other areas on how the patterns could be integrated into the future urban development process and contribute to the sustainable water system.