A Compact Desakota?: Peri-Urban Areas in the Jing-Jin-Ji Megaregion (China)

This thesis explores possible transformations of peri-urban areas in the Jing-Jin-Ji megaregion (China) in order to improve the region’s performance in terms of environmental and social sustainability. Peri-urbanity in East-Asia - or Desakota, a term coined by Terry McGee in the 1990s - can be conceptualized as a combination of easing urban...

Exploring the Endogenous Development Model of Rural Areas Based on Tourism Background, take Wuyuan as an example

The question explored in this thesis is how to use the cultural dimension of the countryside with a community-based approach to help the rural endogenous development under the background of the urban-rural dual economic differentiation caused by China’s rapid urbanization. Giving an alternative possibility to the current top-down tourism model...

Towards a Livable City for Elderlies: Designing new urban strategies to integrate neighborhood-based services systems with historical area fabric in Changsha, China.

Ageing is a serious problem all around the world, making lots of countries under fiscal and political pressures (United Nations report, 2015), so does China. As country who has the biggest population of ageing, reaching 0.241 billion (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2017), China faces the most severe conflicts between ageing society and...

See you at heritage: A new urban regeneration approach based on heritage revitalization for South Luogu Lane area, Beijing

The story of this project starts with the bad relationship between resident, tourists and the heritage sites. Firstly, local residents’ existence is not being acknowledged as part of the heritage. Secondly, tourists cannot find open heritage site easily because of excessive commercialization and unreadable space. Thirdly, there is a bad social...

Tomorrow rural land: vitalise Chinese idle homestead land through long-stay rural leisure development

The rapid urbanisation process in China has caused the emergence of much idle rural land, especially homestead land, which constitutes a huge waste of land resource and brings about several social problems. Nowadays, Chinese government has realised this problem and has put forward institutional intervention to rural land, and encourage to use...

From Line to Zone: Transforming the Miami River & Canal into Urban Landscape Infrastructure

The research context is based on the problematic situations of urban riparian area (Miami River & Canal). With research by design as the main method, the research aims to retransform the riparian area from an isolated line into a closely connected urban zone through designing the river & canal as urban landscape infrastructure and...

From input to output: Urban Agriculture as a method to Eco-efficient Urban landscape

Re(generate) Locally: Enhance the livability of deprived neighborhood by establishing better spatial network to accommodate local economy and everyday life

This project aims to take the Xipailou neighborhood- a deprived mixed-use neighborhood in the city center as the primary case for studying regeneration, try to formulate a more comprehensive regeneration approach that improves the livability. The process is different from the current top-down regeneration approach in China. Based on the...

Livability in a growing Shenzhen: How to make Shenzhen a more migrant-friendly city to young graduates?

This research project, based on the hot issues of escaping from mega cities in China, focuses on young graduates and intends to improve their livability and make Shenzhen a more migrant-friendly city to them. Livability, including<br/>affordability and good accessibility to services and jobs, is the main topic and final goal of this thesis. To...

Living in Diversity, Spatial Transformations towards the multicultural deprived inner city neighborhoods of Athens

Our current cities, especially the metropolitan ones are becoming more and more diverse. According to literature diversity and tolerance are considered as a key aspects for economic prosperity (R. Florida,2011). However reality proves another aspect, since neighborhoods where diversity prevails are usually characterized as deprived, an aspect...

Resilient me for tomorrow: Towards socio-resilient regeneration of urban village in Guangzhou

This project is an attempt to search for an alternative regeneration approach of urban villages under the huge redevelopment pressure in Guangzhou. The past lessons we learned from the monotonous urban paradigm of housing commodities, has shown the emerging gaps between rich and poor, between traditional and modern, between migrants and citizens...

Elderly Living in the City

The upcoming years, the amount of elderly people is growing rapidly. Besides, elderly people are expected to continue living independently at their home. The number of places in nursing homes are limited because a lot of nursing homes closed their doors. Now, older people are dependent on themselves, their neighbourhood and connections. It...

Transforming Danwei housing: How can the old residential courts from the 1980s to 1990s in Guangzhou respond to diversified demands in urban renewal?

Danwei housing is a typical and common residential type in Chinese cities. The radical social structure changing and urban development after the Economic Reform have influenced these old neighborhoods and even restructured them from all aspects. This thesis has looked into the current social, economic, and spatial transformation surrounding...