Urban Planning « World Landscape Architecture – landscape architecture webzine

Wuxi Taihu New City | Wuxi China | SOM with Tom Leader Studio

Wuxi Taihu New City is an approximately 500-hectare master plan that reconnects the city with its waterfront and creates dense, walkable neighborhoods oriented around a central park. The master plan, by SOM in collaboration with Tom Leader Studio, involves an extensive open space network to improve quality of life in a rapidly urbanizing region. Taihu Basin, the region surrounding Wuxi, is home to over 50 million people and is one of the most developed regions of China. The Wuxi Taihu New City master plan represents a new model for compact urban development in China that enhances the existing landscape and creates value through parks and a new public waterfront.

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LESS (Local-area Envisioning and Sustainability-scoring System) | HASSELL

LESS (Local-area Envisioning and Sustainability-scoring System) is a design decision-making framework developed by HASSELL to generate sustainable design solutions that lessen emissions, use of resources and social disparity.
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2050 Ultra Flood Plain | Ayutthaya Thailand | Shma

The goal of modern development has created a clear separation between agricultural and industrial activities, between human and nature, between fluid and solid territories, which become a threat to human living. As we move forwards and slowly detach from nature, we neglect the power of it and forget how we once live with it. Ayutthaya is the city which illustrates such on-going situation clearly, from the day when water was city’s breath to the day when water become city’s catastrophe to local economy, society and environment. In planning for the prospect Ayutthaya we shall try to understand the formation of crisis, in order to determine the new balance between water, Ayutthaya living and Chao Phraya river basin.

2050 Ultra Flood Plain | Ayutthaya Thailand | Shma

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Leicester Square City Quarter | London UK | Burns + Nice

Image Credit | Burns + Nice

In June 2007 BURNS + NICE won a design competition for the re-design of Leicester Square, organised by Westminster City Council. The square is the home of British cinema staging over 50 film premières every year as well as a number other large scale events throughout the year. It attracts approximately two million visitors each week. Together with its side streets the square accommodates 250 servicing deliveries every morning, over 35 al fresco dining pitches, the largest cinemas and casinos in the UK and five hotels, with another two large ones planned. In combination these activities make the Leicester Square City Quarter a challenging and multi-layered urban environment.
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A High Line for London winners announced

Winner | Pop Down by Fletcher Priest Architects

The Landscape Institute, Mayor of London and Garden Museum has announced Pop Down by Fletcher Priest Architects as the winner of the A High Line for London design competition.
Fletcher Priest Architects designed Pop Down to “create an urban mushroom garden lit by sculptural glass-fibre mushrooms at street level inside the ‘Mail Rail’ tunnels beneath Oxford Street.”

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