Urban development, Yu argues, should work with natural processes. Landscape architect Kongjian Yu has spent decades arguing for a different approach: let water, plants and existing ecosystems do the work that concrete was never good at. Shanghai Houtan Park is one of the clearest examples of that approach.
Charles Waldheim, a Harvard professor of landscape architecture, examines this argument in Landscapes for Adaptation: Evidence from China. The book analyzes 60 built projects by Yu and his practice, Turenscape, and measures how they perform against flooding, climate swings and ecological decline.
Shanghai Houtan Park turns an industrial site into a water treatment park
Shanghai Houtan Park shows the method at full scale. Turenscape designed the 14-hectare park for the Shanghai World Expo, and it opened in 2010. The site sits on the Huangpu River, where a steel factory and a shipyard had left the ground badly degraded and the river heavily polluted.
Houtan’s river-side transformation sits within a long tradition of Shanghai waterfront projects, and Snøhetta’s Shanghai Grand Opera House on the Huangpu shows how the same river has been reimagined in a very different, sculptural way.
At Shanghai Houtan Park, the designers kept the site’s industrial history visible. Reclaimed materials, agricultural terraces and a network of paths form part of the park’s public experience.
A constructed wetland runs through the park. Terraces, cascades and wetland plants move river water through a sequence of treatment stages. The system handles about 2,400 cubic meters of water a day, raising its quality from Lower Grade V to Grade III, which is suitable for non-potable uses. The same wetland also helps manage floodwater, and its planted river edge gives aquatic life and birds a place to live.
Water treatment, flood control, habitat and public access share one landscape. Visitors can see processes that most cities hide behind concrete walls and underground pipes.
Working with damaged landscapes instead of replacing them
Yichang Yunhe Park in Hubei province takes a similar path. Completed in 2013, the 12-hectare project converts twelve polluted, abandoned fish ponds into what Turenscape calls a “green sponge.” The existing water bodies become the base of a system that cleans canal water and treats contaminated stormwater.
The design relies on minimal intervention. The former ponds join a wider mix of vegetation and water, and elevated walkways let people move through the site without disturbing it. The project’s value lies partly in its starting point: an existing landscape that was already damaged.
In Ningbo, the Yinzhou Central River Transformation, completed in 2010, adds wetland planting to the riverbanks and creates walkways and public areas. It softens the engineered edges of the river while keeping its role in the city’s water infrastructure.
Turenscape’s website lists more recent recognition for the practice’s work. These include a 2026 UIA 2030 Award for Sustainable Management of Water for Haikou’s Meishe River Greenway and Fengxiang Park, and a 2024 ASLA Urban Design Honor Award for the Xi’an Yannan Park urban balcony.
These projects suggest that ecological urbanism does not always mean bringing untouched nature into the city. It can mean rethinking infrastructure that already exists, including drainage channels, abandoned ponds, industrial waterfronts and flood-control systems. Each site becomes a chance to restore ecological function and change how people experience water.
From water management to a more-than-human city
Wetlands and planted riverbanks reduce flooding and improve water quality. They also give other species somewhere to live. Still, managing water is not the same as designing a city around the needs of other forms of life.
Donna Haraway, a feminist theorist, offers a useful lens. In her 2016 book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, she challenges the idea that humans stand apart from the rest of the living world. She describes life as a network of interdependencies in which organisms and environments shape each other.
Her concept of sympoiesis, or making-with, describes a world produced collectively rather than controlled by a single species. Viewed this way, Yu’s wetlands at Shanghai Houtan Park become more than flood systems. They are places where plants, insects, birds, microorganisms and aquatic species interact, and those relationships shape urban life.
Ecological infrastructure does not automatically produce a more-than-human city. A landscape can support biodiversity and still be designed mainly around human priorities. Its ecological value depends on long-term maintenance, water quality, habitat connections, and whether different species can settle in and survive. Vegetation alone does not prove that an ecosystem works.
Yu’s emphasis on giving other species a place in the city has a counterpart in architecture that makes room for animals, and Historical Rooftop Sanctuaries and Silkworm Spaces for Animals explores how earlier builders did this, offering a useful historical comparison.
Social questions also matter. Green infrastructure can improve urban environments, but it does not by itself address unequal access to public space, the displacement of existing communities, or the uneven spread of environmental benefits. Restoration can become part of broader redevelopment, which may raise land values and change who can afford to live nearby. Judging these projects requires looking at their effect on local residents as well as on other species.
Readers who want to follow these debates beyond China can find related discussion on INDX|GLOBAL, a cultural platform that places Indian architecture, design and creative thinking in conversation with the wider world.
A practical foundation for adaptation
Waldheim’s book documents how landscape architecture can help cities adapt to climate change through working systems. Its importance goes beyond combining water management with public space. The projects suggest that cities are shaped by the relationship between human activity and ecological processes.
If cities are shared environments, their success cannot rest only on how well they protect people from environmental change. It also depends on the relationships they allow between human and non-human life. The more-than-human city is not a finished utopia. It is an ongoing effort to learn how to live alongside the species and systems that already make urban life possible.
Source: designboom.com
Frequently asked questions
How much water does Shanghai Houtan Park treat each day?
Shanghai Houtan Park’s treatment system handles about 2,400 cubic meters of water a day. It raises the water’s quality from Lower Grade V to Grade III, which is suitable for non-potable uses.
What was the Shanghai Houtan Park site like before it was transformed?
The site on the Huangpu River was home to a steel factory and a shipyard, which had left the ground badly degraded and the river heavily polluted. Turenscape designed the 14-hectare park for the Shanghai World Expo, and it opened in 2010.
What is the ‘green sponge’ at Yichang Yunhe Park?
Yichang Yunhe Park converts twelve polluted, abandoned fish ponds into what Turenscape calls a “green sponge.” The existing water bodies become the base of a system that cleans canal water and treats contaminated stormwater.
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