Ji Tang zài Shanghai: cultivating a new idea

Abstract

Overwhelming urbanization processes continue to threaten huge amounts of Shanghai’s adjacent fertile land. The city has become unable to feed its population in a sustainable way. Moreover, Shanghai occupies low-lying land and agricultural yields are affected by the rising sea-levels and land subsidence. Urbanization has come with massive population shifts from the countryside to the city. This has resulted in grave tensions between Shanghai’s residents and migrant population and between urban and rural lifestyles. This practicum addresses these related food, land, and social issues through landscape architecture.

While other contemporary urban food-growing landscapes are investigated, what is most important is the introduction of a new development paradigm based on Ji Tang (dyke-pond-field). A productive landscape infrastructure along the Suzhou River in Shanghai is proposed and re-establishment of productive land at a site scale is explored in a landscape design for Moganshan, an urban patch.