First Year MLA Student Xiaohao Yang Wins National ASLA Student Honor Award in Analysis and Planning
This extraordinarily far-reaching plan addresses the long-term prospect of catastrophic sea-level rise in China’s Pearl River Delta that is the inevitable effect of climate change. Facing an issue of enormous complexity in one of the most densely populated regions in the world, the planners have proposed a phased 80-year adaptation strategy that first transforms the agricultural economy in the tidal flats to aquaculture, then over time replaces tidal flats with salt marshes, and finally implements a mixed marsh and mangrove scheme of floating platforms, fisheries, and biogas power generation. This sophisticated and refined plan seeks to preserve the local culture by offering a constructive response to what otherwise would be a devastating reality.