Bin Jiang (editor) - Landscape Empowerment: A Participatory Design Approach to Create Restorative Environments for Assembly Line Workers in the Foxconn Factory

There is no doubt that the rise and fall of the Qinghu Village are closely related to the profound changes in the world industry pattern, especially from the manufacturing sector. In the past few decades, due to the international shift of manufacturing patterns, Chinas reform and opening up, a large number of peasants have uprooted from their hometown to pursue their dreams in the hotspot of the Pearl River Delta. They trade in countless world factories for meager incomes through long hours at the expense of family life and physical health. More importantly, they are looking for opportunities to stay, take root, and prosper in the city. Therefore, the factory and the urban village formed an intricate, conflicted, yet relatively stable relationship. In this relationship, the forces of material space, multi-facial local culture, and social and economic structure are constantly driving the change of urban village and even the city.

The Division of Landscape Architecture of The University of Hong Kong built a long-term cooperative relationship with Shenzhen Longhua Foxconn Community in order to help the revitalization of the community and landscape improvement. Since December 2015, Dr. Bin Jiang from The University of Hong Kong has led the research and design team to conduct field research work for/with Longhua Community and the adjacent factories.

In the past 3 years, Dr. Bin Jiang led young designers to Shenzhen Longhua Foxconn Community to conduct design workshop. This book records the investigation and the design process of the young designers from The University of Hong Kong. There are three major sections in this book, namely, (1) Investigation and Analysis of Qinghu Community in Global, Urban, and Community Scale, (2) Design for the Community Environment, and (3) The Deep and Systematic Reconstruction of the Community.

Balancing the demands of high-intensity factory production that underpins the countrys unparalleled economic growth with the environmental and social quality of daily life for the thousands of migrant workers and local residents within the factory communities of Southern China is an example of what Horst Rittel (in the 1960s) described as a wicked problem complex and indeterminate, with obscure and often contradictory aspects, and one which cannot easily be resolved.

The hypersensitive and operationally constrained conditions within and around the factories at Longhua, and the transitory nature of many of the communities involved, present huge challenges, even for mature professionals. Constructing a detailed understanding of local environment and society, defining meaningful objectives, and choosing optimum moments for intervention, and the generation of relevant and resilient design proposals, are only possible through extensive and patient ethnographic research, working alongside local representatives to get inside both the physical sites and the contextual issues.

These difficulties cannot be understated and underscore the incredible achievement and superior quality of the student work in the studios and workshops presented in this book. It also stands testament to the insightful pedagogical design of the instructors and their very careful and detailed planning, through which these unique and comprehensively grounded experiential learning opportunities have been created for the students.

These initiatives stand very much at the forefront of the work of the Division of Landscape Architecture and succinctly represent its mission to develop students landscape knowledge and design skills through projects and studies that address the severe environmental and societal (wicked) challenges that society faces in the twenty-first century. They also serve to expand the landscape architectural discipline within the region and to define a more critical and impactful role for the profession.