‘Negative Approach to Urban Planning’, also known as ‘negative approach’, ‘negative planning approach’ or simply ‘negative planning’, is a ‘landscape urbanism approach’. It is a new concept and terminology raise by Chinese landscape architect, Professor of Peking University YU Kongjian. Negative approach does not mean anti urban planning as its name may seem to suggest, nor does it simply refer to green space priority. It is a new approach to physical planning of cities and a landscape methodology of planning. It distinguishes itself from other theories as it is an innovation and a possibly practical way of solving urban planning problems in Chinese cities.
Contents
Background
The negative approach is proposed by Yu in the degrading ecological background and chaos of city planning in China, especially big cities. This approach argues that when it comes to dealing with issues brought up by rapid urban development, the conventional ‘population speculation–land use–infrastructure layout’ approach ‘has been proven invalid’ and responsible for the ‘chaotic situation and degrading ecological conditions’ and ‘loss of cultural and spiritual landscape’ in Chinese cities like Beijing and Shenzhen. So Yu raises an ecological planning methodology which gives priority to planning of EI (ecological infrastructure), and tries to ‘provide land use and urban planning with a solid ecological basis’.
Theory
The negative approach is based on both eastern and western ecological planning theories, especially the McHarg’s theory of Design with Nature and Landscape Urbanism. The Landscape Urbanism takes landscape rather than architecture as the ‘basic building block or urbanism’. It can be understood as the contrary of Architecture Urbanism, which uses buildings, road networks and other constructions to define urban forms. Yu said in an interview during the 2009 China Landscape Architecture Education Conference & Landscape Architects Conference that he considers the negative approach ‘the Chinese version of Landscape Urbanism’. The negative approach mainly focuses on landscape as its operation field, meaning to use landscape, rather than the architectures or other constructions as the infrastructure to shape urban form. The key for negative approach is planning in Ecological Infrastructure. It takes traditional Chinese art of Feng-shui as a pre-scientific model, because Feng-shui takes natural pattern as priority which is quite similar to the aim of negative planning. Furthermore, the negative approach takes ‘the 19th century notion of greenways as recreational infrastructure, the early 20th century idea of green belts as urban form makers, and the late 20th century notion of ecological networks and Ecological Infrastructure (EI) as a biological preservation framework’.
Objective
Facing the challenges in today’s Chinese urban planning, Yu discusses about the ethic of land use in China and referred the land as Chinese gods, he argues that we should ‘go back to earth’ and let the ‘god of earth’ come back to life in his book Negative Planning Method. He points out that the core of planning in Chinese cities should be sustainability for development on limit land. And this is what negative planning should care about. Its purpose is to develop land while maintaining the ecological and cultural integrity, to shape landscape form and urban form in a sustainable way. ‘The overall objectives are smart preservation and smart growth’.
Method
To accomplish these goals, negative approach consists of the following steps:
- 1) Process analysis: Using software and tools like GIS to systematically analyze landscapes for ecosystem functions or services which are targeted to be safeguarded by EI. This step includes: Abiotic processes, Biotic processes and Cultural processes.
- 2) Defining landscape SPs: SP refers to Superposition. It includes Water process (flood control) SP, Geological disasters prevention SP, Biodiversity SP, Cultural heritage protection SP and Recreation SP. Landscape SPs contain important ‘elements and spatial position’ in ‘safeguarding the different process’.
- 3) Defining EI: The SPs are integrated by overlaying techniques to form comprehensive EI at variety levels: high, medium, low.
- 4) Defining urban form: In this step, we can develop scenarios of regional urban growth patterns by ‘using the multiple EI alternatives as framing structures’. The decision makers of the city now can evaluate from economical, ecological and social aspects and pick from the scenarios.
Significant Cases
- 1) The Growth Pattern of Taizhou City Based on Ecological Infrastructure, Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province, China, by YU Kongjian, LI Dihua, LIU Hailong, CHENG Jin. 2005 ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architecture) Honor Award, Planning and Analysis winner.
- 2) The negative approach to urban growth planning of Beijing, China, by YU Kongjian, WANG Sisi, LI Dihua.