As a concept that emerged in Europe, a bio-district is an area where different actors work together for the innovative and integrated transformation of rural food systems and the sustainable ...management of local resources, based on the principles of organic farming and with farmers playing a central role. Traditional Chinese villages represent sustainable models for the management of rural food systems and natural resources, developed by indigenous peoples who have been in “dialogue” with the land over millennia and adapted to specific geographical and ecological environments. These models encompass well-established edible green infrastructure (EGI) ecological structures, rich in indigenous knowledge and understanding of the environment that support food supply and regional ecological sustainability. Our case study focuses on a well-preserved village of the Dong ethnic group in southwest China, which maintains traditional livelihoods and a local food system. We used field surveys, interviews, participatory mapping to propose an EGI model of the traditional Dong village, which comprises the following key elements: the “rice-fish-duck” cycle as a key factor of traditional livelihoods, the hierarchical ecological structure of “households-groups-village,” and corresponding management models. This study aims to comprehensively understand the knowledge of sustainable food systems and natural resource management derived from traditional China. It achieves this by theoretically analyzing the traditional village EGI that has evolved over China’s thousand-year agricultural civilization. The objective is to apply this understanding to the construction of bio-districts in rural China. EGI model in traditional villages worldwide have the potential to offer lessons from millennium-old indigenous agricultural systems, which may have relevance for current environmental and food crises faced by our industrialized world, the construction of bio-districts and organic regions, and the sustainable management of local resources.
Adjusting to incarceration is traumatic. An under-utilized strategy understood to buffer and counteract the negative impacts of incarceration are nature interventions.
Outcomes of an ...interdisciplinary design studio course focused on developing masterplans for a women's prison in the Pacific Northwest (US) are presented. Course objectives included comprehension and application of therapeutic and culturally expressive design principles to increase the benefits of environmental design within a carceral setting; collaboration, developing a deeper, more representative understanding of how design processes can improve the lives of marginalized populations; and enhancing design skills, including at masterplan and schematic scale using an iterative process and reflection.
A landscape architect, occupational therapist, and architect teaching team, with support from architects and justice specialists facilitated an elective design studio course to redesign the Washington Corrections Center for Women campus.
In a ten-week academic quarter, six student design teams created conceptual masterplans for therapeutic outdoor spaces at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Students presented their plans to prison staff, current and ex-offenders, and architects and landscape architects in practice, and then received positive feedback.
Despite well-documented need for and value of nature interventions to improve health and wellbeing for everyone regardless of circumstance or situation, the project awaits administrative approval to move forward to installation.
Humans have innately established close and profound ties with the, and through these relationships shaped many kinds of landscapes. Among these are sacred landscapes, which have drawn the attention ...of researchers due to their cultural significance. In the field of health geography, large-sized sacred regional landscapes are now the focus of studies for their therapeutic properties. However, few scholars have focused on small sacred landscape systems at the community level (constructed by local communities) or the physical and psycological health benefits that these landscapes offer to the local residents. These small-sized and widespread, but often hidden, sacred landscapes are closely tied to people's daily lives and work. They have evolved and grown over millennia to become critical sociocultural phenomena. This study takes the sacred bao ye landscape of the Dong people of China as the research subject. By adopting the case study approach, field research, semi-structured interviews, and textual analysis, it summarizes the types, geographical distribution, rituals and processes of bao ye as a sacred landscape of the Huanggang village in Guizhou Province, and concludes with an analysis of motivation and health benefits to the bao ye worship. In this paper we argue that bao ye is a sacred landscape system focusing on the healthy development of children, and constitutes a local belief developed in an isolated environment lacking medical resources, which remains in practice. The sacred landscape of bao ye offers a therapeutic environment, providing children with increased opportunities to engage with and build deep connections to nature. Thruogh this process children may develop a bond with nature that inspires them to protect nature on their own accord. We argue that bao ye offers an important case study for understanding the landscape-people-healing interactivity at the community level.
•Sacred landscapes have beneficial effects on the physical and mental health of humans.•The community-level sacred landscape of Bao ye is important for the healthy development of local children.•The sacred landscape system of the Dong people helps to better protect this precious traditional cultural landscape.
The soundscape quality of urban parks can influence the mental and physical health of park visitors. This paper proposes strategies for optimizing soundscape quality by correlating the physical ...parameters to the human perception. The data has been gathered through a case study of Greenlake Park located in Kunming, China. The objective physical acoustic indexes and the subjective soundscape perception were analyzed using a combination of GIS spatial statistical analysis from 1224 pieces of environmental sound pressure level data and questionnaire data of human perception collected through soundwalks. The conclusions are as follows: (1) Compared with water bodies, lands perform better in absorbing and reducing the environmental sound pressure level with a decrease of 2.0 dB every 15 m in the terrestrial landscape of rich plant layers and high degree of enclosure, compared to a decrease of 1.5 dB every 15 m in the water landscape with lotus leaves, cruise ships or structures; (2) Sound pressure level and types of sound sources profoundly affect our soundscape perception. Acoustic environment evaluation, soundscape suitability, visual preferences, pleasure perception and relaxation perception are positively correlated with natural sound perception (p < 0.01), while significantly negatively correlated with sound pressure level, human activity and mechanical sound perception. In the end, the correlation between landscape elements and sound pressure level, sound sources and soundscape perception are discussed, and a soundscape optimization strategy for urban parks supported by research data is proposed.
Cast out of their highland villages, many Mayans have resettled around the garbage dump in Guatemala City. Children went to the dump to work salvaging plastic, cardboard and food. In 2004, children ...were banned from the dump and now stay at home without supervision. In 2006, the University of Washington Landscape Architecture Design/Build Program collaborated with Safe Passage to design a portion of their school facilities and to transform their donated, decommissioned dump site into a therapeutic garden. This environment is designed to help the children learn about the natural world, their culture, science, math and writing, gain vocational skills and ultimately reconstruct their lives in a healthier direction. This paper focuses on the role of natural places in rebuilding children's lives concurrent with a disaster and how the rebuilding of a place for safe play, learning and skill building can help children endure and move beyond the immediate effects of the disaster.
Landscape preference (LP) is often a critical interdisciplinary research topic that explores the interaction between human beings and their environments. Human preferences for landscape can have a ...profound influence on how the preservation, reconstruction, and restoration of the landscape is approached, both consciously and unconsciously. Theories of LP emerged in the 1960s and can be divided into three need categories: (1) the need for survival, (2) the need for affection, and (3) the need for cognition. However, these theories lack a unifying framework. The hypothesis presented herein is that LPs are derived from innate human needs. Based on cognitive neuroscience, positive psychology, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, an integrated theoretical model explaining the neural basis and mental processes that inform LPs is developed. The concept of “positive landscape” and the argument that landscape change could be a potential tool for regulating human LPs are proposed. Two regulatory strategies used to actively manipulate LPs in a way that benefits both the ecosystem and human wellbeing are described in this study.
Studies on the use of cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) as sensing phase for detection of organic vapours in air are described. Stock solutions of 1.0% (w/v) cholesteryl nonanoate (CN) and ...cholesteryl chloride (CC) were prepared in tetrahydrofuran. Binary mixtures, with compositions ranging from 0.18 to 0.25% of CC and 0.82–0.75% of CN, respectively, were prepared by appropriate mixing of the stock solutions. Films were cast by pipetting three 10
μl aliquots of the CLC solution mixture onto a glass disk, whose reverse side was made black to absorb unscattered light. The glass disk was adapted to the common end of a bifurcated optical fibre bundle and placed in a glass vial, which provided a headspace of organic vapours. Measurements were carried out at 27±1
°C, a temperature in which the CLC mixtures maintain their liquid crystalline properties. The responses of the CLC mixtures to vapours of ethanol, acetone, benzene, pyridine and hexane were investigated. The colour of the sensing phases depended on their compositions and exposure to organic vapours gives rise to a change in the optical characteristics of liquid crystals. It was found that the CLC layers containing 0.23–0.25% of CC had no significant change in optical properties when exposed to organic vapours and that ethanol did not cause any optical changes in the liquid crystal layers. Benzene as well as hexane always turned all the coloured liquid crystalline layers to colourless. The CLC layers exhibited different behaviours to vapours of acetone and pyridine. For example, the wavelengths of maximum scattering for the 0.19% CC layer were 530
nm in air, 545
nm in pyridine and 580
nm in acetone. The CLC layers showed reversibility. The lifetimes of these layers (interval of time in which the liquid crystalline phase exists, before crystallisation) were investigated by employing acetone and
n-hexane vapours. Average lifetimes of 14–15
min were found for films in contact with these vapours, while a lifetime of 205
min was possible when the CLC film was exposed to air.
Preparing future landscape architects for practice involves not only teaching them about globally important cultural, social, and ecological issues but also the processes for addressing them ...successfully in the built environment. An educational model that immerses students in these issues through community and cross-cultural dialog is the Design/Build Studio. (Winterbottom, 1999)
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