Landscape Architecture Frontiers – serie

Observation and representation is a foundational subject in Landscape Architecture. Landscape design is a process shaped by the connections and interactions among designers, users, and the real world. This issue aims to explore the ways that help landscape architects: 1) see the scientism of design disciplines and explore the methodological principles of design generation; 2) translate and convey design ideas and emotional inspiration to the users with rich design vocabulary (in size, shape, material, proportion, composition, etc.) through multiple perceptual approaches; 3) read sites from economic, ecological, cultural, and other perspectives to present more convincing and appealing landscape narratives with the aid of emerging technological means; 4) understand various needs of all parties and stakeholders, coordinating interests and benefits and improving the utilisation of public resources through landscape design; and 5) create educational places for improving the public's rational and aesthetic norms.

This issue focuses on:1) Exploring the significance of territorial spatial planning by stressing its necessity and main ideas under the contemporary background of ecological civilisation construction in China, while re-examining the role of landscape architects in this reform.2) Strengthening research on related methodologies and techniques of urban ecological planning, ecological security pattern, ecological infrastructure, and ecological restoration to improve cities liveability and resilience and rebuild harmonious human-nature relationship under a mandatory planning framework combined with resilient measures, avoiding inflexible ecological conservation practices.3) Analysing and learning from diversified efforts made by different countries and regions to promote urban development while protecting ecosystems, particularly their experience on territorial, regional, and urban planning that is significantly valuable to the Chinese counterpart, to leverage the valueof territorial natural resources.4) Exploring feasible approaches that help restore urban ecosystem structure and ecological elements, andimprove planning and design methods on specific sites, so as to enhancespatial construction and ecological quality, to eventually improve a national eco-security pattern with scientific and user-friendly planningand design.5) Encouraging applications of research frontiers in geology, macro-ecology, regional economics, public management, and sustainability science.

Urban environments (including built, natural, and social environments) crucially impact children's physical and psychological health, particularly in cities. Now children's mentality and safety, and the freedom of travelling and playing have raised concerns in society. In this issue, trans-disciplinary discussions between scholars and practitioners in landscape architecture and environmental psychology, environmental behaviours, human engineering, public health, etc., as well as city managers, are encouraged to explore the ways to improve urban environments for children's outdoor activities. With such a multi-disciplinary coverage, this issue aims to update landscape architects' theoretical and methodological approaches to issues of children and urban environments, with a deeper understanding of their disciplinary competences, limitations, and challenges thus to find out their irreplaceable role in guaranteeing children's well-beings.

The NBS studies will focus on both the current core agendas of climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation, and water resilience, and the emerging theoretical research and application in health design for nature, natural education, and spatial governance and ecological preservations/restoration at different scales.

In this issue, LA Frontiers focuses on prototype studies by examining those traceable and repeatable landscape theories, methodologies, and pedagogies, and introducing the knowledge from allied disciplines to inspire knowledge innovation, with a particular highlight on the prototypes adaptive to future uncertainties.

The new urbanisation necessitates the upgrading of urban governance and spatial planning and design. Landscape Architecture Frontiers accentuates the intelligence on urban growth and physical construction for years. In this issue, LA Frontiers focuses on the topics about urban governance and spatial quality improvement under the promotion of inventory planning and governance refinement, including:1) Urban village (micro-) renewals, waterfront revitalisation, and industrial, cultural, and historical heritage regeneration;2) Public participation, community engagement, and other polycentric urban governance modes and inclusive design approaches;3) The resilience of urban planning and design against sudden disasters and public health emergencies and crises;4) Diagnoses on the working systems/mechanisms that support the upgrades of urban governance and public space construction, through lenses of Economic Sociology.By gathering cutting edge research with international outlooks and presenting latest practice examples among China and abroad, LA Frontiers might offer a new prospective that helps professionals interpret associated governance and planning policies, inform practitioners the goals and roadmaps of public empowerment, navigate planners and designers with flexible implementation and management guidelines, to eventually improve the spatial quality of public places, as well as the overall benefits in society, ecology, and economy.

This issue hopes to interpret and display the treasured qualities of urban wildernesses and inspire landscape architects to strike the balance between urban wildernesses and human settlements via ecological planting methods that facilitate natural evolution and ecological flows.

Landscape is a time-space compound shaped by human activities on natural processes; the persistence of a landscape supports its continuity and stability over time, as well as the stable variety of physical environment. For remaining landscapes, the persistence means the stability of natural ecosystems and the harmony of cultural-social contexts. The former emphasises the ability to maintain the dynamism and stability of the landscape system against external disturbances; the latter one, by regarding the landscape as a man-land composite ecosystem, refers to the ability to maintain localities and cultural legacy in response to changes of natural and social environments. For emerging landscapes, persistence manifests the ability to interact and integrate with and adapt to the remaining landscapes.The rapid urbanisation and population growth have caused tremendous changes in urban and rural landscapes worldwide, increasingly undermining the persistence of landscapes: traditional rural landscapes and urban historic neighbourhoods have been replaced with massive industrial scenes; the lack of innovative design ideas, the stagnation of theoretical study, and the limitation of aesthetic awareness have resulted in the neglect of critical ecological, social, and aesthetic values of such heritages, the damage of ecological security patterns, and the disappear of people’s collective memories about vernacular landscapes. Efforts addressing the pressing issues, e.g. the destruction of natural environment, the loss of landscape values, and the culture shock, are expected.Text in English and Chinese.

In recent years, China has issued several basin-scale plans to deal with pressing resources, environmental, and social problems caused by regional urbanisation. These plans help push ahead flood control and disaster reduction, the allocation, utilisation, and conservation of water resources, water ecological environment protection, and integrated basin management. The development of Yangtze River Delta, the Yangtze Economic Belt, the Yellow River Basin, Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region, Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, etc., has now become new national agendas, which are guaranteed by top-down policies and offer opportunities for regional growth. Several new laws and regulations coming into effect as of 2021 also reinforce the collaborative basin management that drives regional social and economic development.Meanwhile, territorial spatial planning systems established under the requirement of Multiple-Plan Integration also underscore basin development strategies in spatial management and ecological restoration. This issue, mainly focusing on the regional planning research based on water and land resources through revealing their ecological characteristics, is expected to include contribution to the following aspects (but is not limited to):1) Research on regional ecology, land use, and ecosystem service at the basin scale2) Research on theories, approaches, and practices relevant to basin spatial planning and ecological restoration3) Research on spatial strategies and economic zoning to propel basin-scale social and economic development4) Research on basin-scale collaborative planning and sustainable development of water resources and environmental protection5) Integrated basin management planning geared to guaranteeing basins’ ecosystem services6) ecological river-corridor conservation and restoration at the basin scaleIn all these topics, researchers and planners are called to act as leaders in interdisciplinary collaboration within the fields of biology, geography, geology, and the climate sciences to solve ecological and environmental problems by treating the water network of a basin, as a whole. In this issue, LA Frontiers also attempts to learn from cutting-edge exemplars worldwide in basin management, especially in ecosystem conservation and restoration, to provide reference for Chinese researchers and practitioners.

Cognitive sciences that aim at establishing scientific and explicit interpretations can diversify approaches to exploring users’ feelings and experiences of a specific environment. For example, people’s emotions and feelings change with their environment, closely related to people’s sensory processes and brain wiring, personal experiences, and visiting purposes, etc., can be understood as a prompt intuitive response. Environmental information and responses are processed very fast to support quick decision making in relation to people’s survival and benefits. Environmental Psychology explains the environmental types people prefer and why certain environments make people feel, for example, anxious or excited. Understanding people’s emotional responses to the environment facilitates, or “nudges” (a term usually used in the inter-discipline of Psychology and Behavioural Economics), users to act or make choices as desired. Moreover, research on attention in cognitive sciences can also inform designers: by controlling the spatial elements and intangible elements (such as light and sound) to minimise environmental disturbance or noise, users’ attention can be directed to specific elements, element combinations or series. During this process, users’ specific emotional memories or symbolic implications are activated, which augments desired feelings and experiences.This issue explores the mechanism of how landscape design affects users’ feelings, experiences, and behaviours, as well as usability, by introducing theories, knowledge, and research methods and findings in Cognitive sciences, psychology, neurobiology, and computer science, so as to support landscape architects’ decision making.