Landscape Architecture Frontiers 049: Urban Wilderness and Planting Design

(Paperback)

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There are highly fragmented urban wildernesses remaining and scattering in rapidly urbanized and exceedingly industrialized cities, ranging from crevices along sidewalks to large areas of isolated forests. Although differing in scales with the natural wilderness, urban wildernesses see similar community structures and often offer similar services, with strong vitality and resilience. However, such natural resources are often misunderstood or overlooked as undesirable places and thus, their great ecological, social, economic, and aesthetic values are ignored. Meanwhile, due to constant changes of global and regional ecological environments, lagged design theories and techniques, and limited aesthetic consciousness, urban plantscapesthe most important producer with provisioning and regulating services for both urban wildernesses and constructed ecosystemsare confronting problems such as poor species and structural diversity, high maintenance requirements, and insufficient ecosystem services.

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 Architecture Frontiers attempts to define an urban wilderness and its images, connotations, implications, and resources; explore related techniques to provide full play to its irreplaceable role in providing ecosystem services such as biodiversity conservation; and focus on urban re-wilding practices and ecological planting theories, aiming at well integrating urban wildernesses into the naturally constructed urban ecosystem to enhance the citys ecological sustainability and resilience.

Author Bio

Kongjian Yu is a doctor of design at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, he is an honorary foreign fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a professor at the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University. Jia Yuan is an associate professor and PhD supervisor for the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Research Fellow at the Key Laboratory of New Technology for Construction of Cities in Mountain Area, Chongqing University, as well as is a cooperative research fellow of the CAS Key Laboratory of Mountain Ecological Restoration and Bioresource Utilization & Ecological Restoration and Biodiversity Conservation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Not to mention a previous guest editor for the issue Themed on Urban Wilderness and Planting Design, of Landscape Architecture Frontiers journal. Bradley Cantrell is a professor and chair in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the School of Architecture, University of Virginia. Vance G. Martin is founder and co-chairman at the Wilderness Specialist Group (IUCN/WCPA), as well president of the Wilderness Foundation Global, and president of the WILD Foundation. Ingo Kowarikis a professor of ecosystem science and plant ecology at the Technische Universitat Berlin, Germany. Walter Kehm is senior principle at LANDinc, he has a MLA from Harvard University. Peter DEL Tredici is Senior Research Scientist Emeritus, Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, and has a PhD in Biology from Boston University. Thomas Rainer is principal of Phyto Studio. Taro Zheming Cai is a PhD student in the department of John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at University of Toronto. Nancy Seaton is a senior associate designer at Future Green Studio.