RESILIENT ECOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE SYSTEMS OF THE FENGXINGLONG ECOLOGICAL PARK,SANYA

In the past 30 years, Sanya has developed into a high-density city with fragmented ecosystems and bottlenecked urban development. In April 2015, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development proposed “Ecological Restoration and Urban Remediation” for Sanya and prioritized the Sanya and Linchun Rivers — two rivers that run through the central city — as core causes. The Fengxinglong Ecological Park project is located at the junction of the two rivers in downtown and its surroudings are occupied for various land uses. Diversified urban interfaces, abundant green space, and numerous ecological contradictions make the site critical for the remediation and restoration of waterways in Sanya. Through a series of resilient landscape design interventions, Fengxinglong Ecological Park catches, stores, and purifies rainwater to reduce river pollution and flooding disasters in addition to offering recreational funtions. As a valuable “urban sponge” and comprehensive resilient ecological park, it has helped restore the historic ecosystem and realized the intensive use of resources.     

以栖息地修复为导向的 湿地公园设计方法 ——以云南省保山市青华湿地为例

Wetland park design seeks to protect and restore the wetland ecosystems of sites through scientific approaches. However, in practice, the relevant ecological principles about wetland restoration are often not effectively understood or applied by landscape designers, resulting in compromised ecological benefits after the restoration, especially in biodiversity and habitat benefits. The authors highlighted the main causal factors in wetland—flooding and fertility—and adopted wetland birds as indicator species to simplify the evaluation method. Based on years of practice, the authors summarized a hydrology-based wetland design method for habitat restoration, aiming to translate ecological principles and research findings into design guidelines that can be easily understood and applied by landscape designers to spatial design. This design method includes 7 steps, namely 1) targeted species selection and goal setting; 2) design of habitat types and spatial arrangement; 3) landform design; 4) water level design; 5) plant community building; 6) landscape design with minimal intervention; and 7) spatial design for natural succession. The article then expanded each step using an illustrative design case, the Qinghua Wetland in Baoshan, Yunnan Province.     

SLOWING DOWN NUTRIENT FLOWS — ECOLOGICAL DESIGN OF THE FENGXIANG PARK ON THE MEISHE RIVER IN HAIKOU

Haikou is a coastal tourist city in Hainan Province of South China with beautiful natural landscapes. During the rapid urbanization in the past decades, the role of natural rivers as city’s water ecological infrastructure has been long-time neglected, resulting in a sharp deterioration of urban ecological resilience and security. Fengxiang Park, sitting at the middle reaches of the Meishe River, is a key ecological node in the watershed, which however had suffered from severe ecological problems. In this demonstrative project, the site was envisioned as an urban park which mitigates urban flooding and water pollution and provides citizens a quality waterfront with pleasant, slow living environment through a substantial ecosystem improvement with means of Design Ecology. Techniques of green sponge construction and the reinforced constructed wetland system deployed in the park have effectively slowed down the flow of water and nutrients, restored habitats for fauna and flora, and increased biodiversity; the introduction of a diversity of slow traffic system has brought vitality to the city by encouraging green traffic modes among citizens and tourists, creating a new tourism, recreational, and cultural destination for the city. More importantly, in view of increasingly severe issues such as water pollution and shortage around the globe, this project shows an obvious reference significance to other practices in urban water quality improvement, flooding control, and the creation of public spaces to provide social and cultural services.     

城市需要怎样的儿童基础设施—儿童权利导向型城市空间建设

This article reviews the concepts of child rights and Child Friendly City at first and underlines that essentially Child Friendly City construction is to protect and guarantee child rights. By examining China’s reality of the design practice for children, the author points out that to build a Child Friendly City, two challenges must be addressed: interpreting child rights in different societal and cultural contexts, and mitigating interest conflicts between the protection of child rights with the current urban construction. In response, the author emphasizes the importance to build child’s infrastructure that is devised to serve varied scenarios, purposes, and childhoods, as well as the fact that this is not a once-forall investment but requires an evolving planning mechanism. Finally, the article states that children’s participation is the key to Child Friendly City construction and the greatest challenge to local implementation, which asks for long-term capacity building for children’s participation and strong support by a top-down management system.