Rapporteur | Barry Wilson  Vice President of the Hong Kong Urban Design Society,Professor

Introduction

On September 26th, 2021, a special session on Resilient Development and Adaptive Planning in the Greater Bay Area was organized by the School of Architecture of South China University of Technology (SCUT) in Chengdu through a combination of online and offline methods. Professor Berry Wilson gave a report entitled Urbanity with chinese characteristics for a resilient age.He mainly gave a comprehensive discussion on environmental quality, resilient development, and adaptive management methods for unknown challenges. Combining the problems of urbanization in China and the characteristics of the Greater Bay Area, Professor Barry Wilson proposed three issues on resilient development: 1. change the mindset; 2. change the process; 3. change the vision.

1、Change the mindset

All the knowledge and problems faced regarding resilient development in urbanization are not just emerging, but have been around for some time. Future-oriented cities will create adaptability and resilience in the face of unknown challenges posed by technological change, population explosion, global pandemics and environmental crises. There is an urgent need for a paradigm shift in the way urban development is conceived, delivered and managed to create a better place to live. How can we be more visionary in the face of a changing world? How do we anticipate what is going to happen in the future? How do we capture it? And not just collect data from the past and then project it into the future that has become obsolete.

In terms of changing the mindset, there are four main questions and suggestions.

(1) The evolution of technology is not linear but exponential, disrupting almost every industry in every country in the world, and the breadth and depth of these changes herald a transformation of the entire production, management and governance system. Innovation, or change, always evolves very fast, and we always have an inertia, i.e. a habit of repeating previous mistakes. In the face of change, we are often not prepared for it.

(2) Construction has been the least modernized sector, slow to introduce new technologies in the construction and management process, demonstrating some of the lowest productivity in the world. Cities such as Shenzhen and Shanghai have seen their buildings change over the past 50 or 60 years, but have been very slow to digitize. In these places, cities are becoming more complex and will go beyond the realm of what the human brain can perceive, and we have to rely on the digital brain to help us do some planning.

(3) In China, very few people recognize the huge climate crisis, and the very low level of basic awareness and understanding of environmental issues, including among the educated classes, means that public outreach and education will be particularly difficult hurdles to cross. We need to change these aspects, we need to be proactive about climate change, and we need to promote public understanding.

(4) Homogenization of Chinese cities is serious, failing to reflect regional characteristics and blindly copying outdated misconceptions from international planning - outdated 20th century concepts such as car-centered/zoned development. Ignoring emerging ideas and building for yesterday instead of building for tomorrow. Resulting in a huge waste of resources and opportunities. To achieve a more resilient city, we must tailor building design to local conditions.

In addition, the 14th Five-Year Plan has continuously emphasised the importance of quality over quantity, which is the future direction of urban development. However, China still uses GDP as the main criterion to assess the quality of development, ignoring the short and long-term impact of pollution and environmental losses on available resources. Changing the mindset also includes changing the GDP-centred evaluation criteria of the past and referring to real progress indicators (GPI) such as ecological footprint, biocapacity, Gini coefficient, index of economic freedom , global peace index, global competitiveness index, environmental index and life satisfaction index.

A major problem in an era of resilience is uncertainty, but we cannot be unprepared for change. We need to be proactive in recognising the huge climate crisis, risk expectations and technological change in order to be better prepared and proactive in planning for the unknown future.

2、change the process

Change is happening much faster than we expected, so we now need to consider whether we have the relevant infrastructure in place, whether it fits with the 2040 goals and whether we can expect change to happen. The public as stakeholders need to go and lead the planning, not respond to it. Professionals have the perfect skills to facilitate collaboration, including: health professionals, social workers, researchers, administrators, scientists, technicians (including engineers and planners). We need to reconsider decisions, rethink approaches and redirect resources as to how to change processes.

(1) Reconsider the current rigid planning. There is very limited scope for the continued use of private motor vehicles in cities in the future. Governments need to take a step back and consider how they really want cities to function and actively plan where things should be. Then look at how best to connect them through future communication technologies (including autonomous vehicles and flying machines) rather than outdated infrastructure.

(2) Much of the southern Pearl River Delta, which is only 30-40 cm above sea level, is so populous and economically developed that Swiss Re considers it to be the highest risk development area in the world. However, cities in the PRD region are only now beginning to undertake disaster risk assessments, which are essential for shaping enlightened thinking about where development makes more sense. The adoption of low impact development models aimed at minimising the deterioration of environmental quality must become the norm.

(3) Many cities were originally formed around horse-drawn vehicles, and then only recently adapted and expanded to conform to mid-20th century automobile development. Current urban efforts are largely focused on re-addressing the damage caused by this process, but urban planning in China continues to use road traffic as a guide to development rather than the essential green and blue infrastructure. It is important to consider whether this is the right approach and whether the interweaving of blue and green can be designed to suit local realities.

It is therefore high risk to plan large-scale commitments based on today's limited forecasts. Today's rigid plans are obsolete and should be developed with flexible options, monitorable and modifiable. Natural resources need to be used wisely in terms of sustainable development, tailored to local conditions, and not just seen as a drain on economic development. If we are to create a resilient and quality living environment, we need to have really good indicators and change the old GDP-centred evaluation criteria to take into account the real progress indicators (GPI), taking into account the short and long-term impact of pollution and environmental losses on available resources.

3、Change the vision

We have different cultures, different climates and the enormous opportunities that technological developments have brought us, allowing us to think differently about what constitutes a people-centred city. In terms of changing the vision, three main areas are suggested.

(1) Development must respond to the local character of a place and enhance 'belonging', and planning must focus on local microclimates, characteristics, resources, culture and heritage. In the case of the Greater Bay Area, the focus is on discovering what the distinctive style of the Greater Bay Area is.

(2) Urban planning must use the science of complexity to plan urban systems and not just dwell on past understandings. Plans must be expected to be more flexible, innovative and continually adaptable to an unknown future. It must begin to mandate the development of experimental development pilots, data-driven risk assessments/environmental assessments, and an ongoing legacy of third-party quality monitoring/certification/feedback loops. The future requires a system of timely response, a localised response system, with real-time planning through artificial intelligence.

(3) Development must be more diverse and innovative in terms of product mix and increase flexibility and adaptability of accommodation. Intergenerational communities must prioritise health, connectivity through public rather than private transport, and walkability for all in a safe, high quality, people-centred environment.

The future needs a timely and responsive planning system that is flexible and responsive to different needs, rather than a top-down planning system. If a resilient and quality living environment is to be created, better measurement indicators need to be established, changing the GDP-centred evaluation criteria of the past and instead building on a more diverse perspective.

4、Conclusion

Finally, Professor Barry Wilson also reminded us that in the face of a changing world, we need to first change our own way of thinking, new ways of measuring, localised ways of measuring China's own values, and establish a two-way feedback and feedback loop combining bottom-up and top-down to change our vision of the future.