This photo summed it all up for me. The wonder and hope Kongjian Yu has created for future generations. The trip was a privilege of a lifetime. I am now signing off &moving to Blue Sky @peterheadCBE for follow up. Thanks for following over many years-love and best wishes. Peter

I told students on the trip that 1000 projects of this quality done in China create “radical hope” for them & the world in teeth of climate change. Prof Kongjian Yu is a true genius eco engineer who gives us all hope for the future. He is music equivalent of Mozart in landscape.

What do you want to know?.

It was dusk on a Sunday & full of families having fun. The linear wetland flows from a treated sewer discharge cascading through clean up terraces into clear lakes planted with stunning wetland trees that love the nutrients. And then the lights came on to create a magical world.

Final project we visited on the China trip was so inspiring! Suzhou Zhenshan Park was built on an old stone quarry at the urban edge as a community, regenerative living landscape that heals the earth & helped rebuild community with a porous linear wetland.

Next stop on our China trip 3rdNov 2024 Conference of Beautiful China & landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University. Annual awards presented to budding architects after keynote speeches including mine-“Climate, Urbanism & Infrastructure”. Much interest in modelling again.

In another part of Haikou before we left for Sanya, Konjiang Yu showed us how they cleaned up a river &brought mangroves into a park at heart of the city. This lady stopped us & said this had changed her life. Her riverside properties worth nothing by pollution were now 3xvalue.

This porous landscape, with dykes & ponds of different depths creates a diversity of habitats that retain & nourish rich biodiversity, including native birds, fish & amphibians. It creates an immersive & intimate experience of a cool oasis, important in a very hot tropical city.

In Sanya Dong’an Park storm water is fed into a network of spirals of cascade terraces around the edge filtering & cleaning water before entering wetland lake from all sides. All crossed by paths & seating areas. Single trees create island habitats, a feature of Yu’s designs.

Sanya is now designated as China “number1 sponge city” thanks to this & other projects designed by Kongjian Yu in a comprehensive city “eco civilisation” master plan for the mayor. High level walkways allow access when flooded plus joy of walking next to birds in the treetops.

City of Sanya got 300mm of rain in 12 hours from Typhoon Yagi 3 weeks before our visit. On the observation tower Kongjian Yu explained the 68Ha park drains 10x its area of city 6800ha. In Typhoon Yagi, the park stored 2m cubic metres of water, the lake rising 3m & no city flood.

Here are the players and the singers

The group playing were being listened to by a bird in the lake opposite, which flew away once they finished.

We arrived at the Sanya Dong’an Wetland Park to the sound of music and singing which shows how loved it is by the community. They come every week to play together.

Jewel project Sanya Dong’an Wetland Park. In 2014 most waterways in built up districts of Sanya were polluted & full of garbage. Concrete flood walls killed mangroves &habitats, blocked tides from sea & storm water run off,with frequent floods. The new 68Ha park has changed that.

After Haikou University meetings we drove across mountainous Hainan island to the southern coastal resort of Sanya. Stopped at a service station where EV car batteries are swopped for charged ones in 3 mins. Video here

In 2010, Makarieva, Gorshkov, (pic below) Sheil, Nobre, & Bai-Lian Li, who is an ecologist at University of California, Riverside, submitted a landmark description of the biotic pump to Atmospheric Chemistry &Physics, a major journal with open peer review.

I presented concerning tipping point scenarios including Amazon forest loss &associated loss of #bioticpump effect in which the forest draws moisture in from lakes and oceans &then travels around the region. I was delighted to meet Larry Lian Li, co/author on #bioticpump papers!

On 31st October we travelled back from the coastal park into Haikou City for lunch with the Uni President & speaking alongside Kongjian Yu at a climate conference at Haikou University College of Forestry and Agriculture. The lunch was beautifully crafted!

Here is a diagram of the transition replacing the 4m high wall, stabilised by trees, which works so well and could be used on any coastal location where a park can be created.