Cities of the Future: On Nature and the Grammar of Design

In his book, 'The sense of style', the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker argues that the categories of grammar reflect the four building blocks of thought: time, space, causality, and matter. Coincidentally, these building blocks are the same ones that dictate the grammar of spatial design. In them being absolute categories, they describe well...

A Landscape-Based Regional Design Approach for Sustainable Urban Development in the Pearl River Delta, China

Adaptive urban transformations employ landscape-based regional design as an integrative and multiscale design and planning approach for sustainable urban development. In this approach, natural and urban dynamics as derived from systems analysis set the pace and nature of adaptation. This chapter presents an initial strategy for adaptive urban...

Design Studios as Method for Exploring Complex Challenges in the Pearl River Delta

This chapter draws on three different design studios that focus on the Pearl River Delta to discuss what kind of knowledge has been generated within them, and how they can be used systematically as a method to address the region’s complex challenges. The three studios differ in their objectives, duration and structure, but are linked by a...

Landscape-Based Fire Resilience: Identifying Interaction Between Landscape Dynamics and Fire Regimes in the Mediterranean Region

Wildfires are widely viewed as key evolving inputs of Mediterranean ecosystem. But anthropogenic climate changes and other socioecological recessions have transformed normal wildfire into megafire. The paradigm shift is needed since the suppression capacity has been increasingly overcome from the fire department. This research is aiming to...

Industrial Transformation and Sustainable Urban Planning in the Pearl River Delta: A Landscape-based Approach

Industrialization in the PRD has brought about great economic growth and contributed to the rise and consolidation of this deltaic region as a key global player. However, it also generated severe environmental imbalances and pollution of vital and non-renewable resources, such as soil, water and air. Nowadays, the increasing shift towards...

Assessing urban landscape composition and configuration in the pearl river delta (China) over time

When used to comprehend how a region changes over time, landscape metrics serve as a precious tool for generating knowledge on transformation dynamics of the spatial patterns and for gain-ing insights on the heterogeneity of its composition. The paper presents the case study of the Pearl River Delta (China). The composition and configuration...

Towards a Landscape-based Regional Design Approach for Adaptive Transformation in Urbanizing Deltas

Deltaic areas are among the most promising regions in the world. Their<br/>strategic location and superior quality of their soils are core factors supporting both human development and the rise of these regions as global economic hubs. At the same time, however, deltas are extremely vulnerable to multiple threats from both climate change and the...

Towards a Landscape based Regional Design Approach for Adaptive Transformation

Deltaic areas are among the most promising regions in the world. Their strategic location, combined with the superior quality of their soils, constitute the main factors that have been supporting both human development and the rise of these regions as global economic hubs. At the same time, however, deltas face extreme vulnerability due to...

复杂关系网络下，城市发展如何满足利益相关者诉求？: 《城市中国》海外观察员第五期工作坊纪实

With the wave of globalization, many countries have witnessed the same trend within which the traditional government-cantered urban management mode is changing. The participation of various non-governmental organizations, private institutions and citizens has made the network of urban governance more complicated than before. In the meanwhile,...

Social vulnerability to natural hazards in urban systems: An application in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)

The concept of risk has become increasingly complex, and has been used not only in relation to the natural features of a region, but also to its socio-economic context. In this conceptualization, the latter directly influences the capacity of a community to cope with, recover from, and adapt to natural hazards. Conceiving vulnerability as a...