Overview

This open access book traces the development of landscapes along the 414-kilometer China–Laos Railway, one of the first infrastructure projects implemented under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and which is due for completion at the end of 2021. Written from the perspective of landscape architecture and intended for planners and related professionals engaged in the development and conservation of these landscapes, this book provides history, planning pedagogy and interdisciplinary framing for working alongside the often-opaque planning, design and implementation processes of large-scale infrastructure. It complicates simplistic notions of development and urbanization frequently reproduced in the Laos–China frontier region. Many of the projects and sites investigated in this book are recent “firsts” in Laos: Laos’s first wildlife sanctuary for trafficked endangered species, its first botanical garden and its first planting plan for a community forest. Most often the agents and accomplices of neoliberal development, the planning and design professions, including landscape architecture, have little dialogue with either the mainstream natural sciences or critical social sciences that form the discourse of projects in Laos and comparable contexts. Covering diverse conceptions and issues of development, including cultural and scientific knowledge exchanges between Laos and China, nature tourism, connectivity and new town planning, this book also features nine planning proposals for Laos generated through this research initiative since the railway's groundbreaking in 2016. Each proposal promotes a wider ""landscape approach"" to development and deploys landscape architecture’s spatial and ecological acumen to synthesize critical development studies with the planner's capacity, if not naive predilection, to intervene on the ground. Ultimately, this book advocates the cautious engagement of the professionally oriented built-environment disciplines, such as regional planning, civil engineering and landscape architecture, with the landscapes of development institutions and environmental NGOs.

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9789811640667

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Ashley Scott Kelly is an assistant professor and expert in geographic information systems at the University of Hong Kong. His research and practice focus on scenario-building and filling knowledge gaps for sustainable development, especially in regions that lack adequate knowledge or transparency in development information. He applies design methods to land change and landscape ecology, with wide expertise on the manipulation of geospatial data for the study, advocacy, design, and delivery of projects in ecologically complex and contested landscapes. His recent works include design guidelines for tropical road infrastructure, wildlife corridor modeling, and coupling high-resolution remote sensing with historical narratives for novel impact assessment. He actively engages development and multilateral agencies across Southeast Asia and teaches design courses on regional planning in China, South and Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Xiaoxuan Lu is an assistant professor in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, where she teaches landscape history and theory, and design studios. Her research focuses on the cultural landscape and geography of conflict, particularly in China and its transboundary regions in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia. Applying analytical cartography, photography, and videography in her research, she aims to reveal the hidden layers of landscape where multiple tensions converge. She has received numerous awards for her research and design works, notably an Award of Excellence (2012) and an Honor Award (2015) from the American Society of Landscape Architects, and a commendation for the Cities & Community category (2019) in the Royal Institute of British Architects President's Awards for Research. Xiaoxuan holds the degree of Bachelor of Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture, Master in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University, and Ph.D. in Human Geography from Peking University.

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