Quanzhou, to design from the perspective of water: Exploring the potential for bridging urban morphology and urban political ecology in urban revitalization research

“Water lies at the section of landscape and infrastructure, crossing between visible and invisible domains of urban space… It does not constitute one object of analysis but rather an intersecting set of processes, practices, and meanings that cuts across existing disciplinary boundaries.” (Gandy, 2014, pp.1-2). The multifaceted meaning of water as waterscape, green infrastructure, water infrastructure, material and capital flows and so on indicates its domain encompassing landscape design, geography, hydrology, anthropology, engineering, and other fields. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective of water, this research seeks a multidisciplinary approach to urban landscape study in the pursuit of design proposals for urban revitalization facing the numerous current challenges, such as urban health promotion, environmental conservation, environmental justice, and socio-cultural innovation for an inclusive and sustainable urban recovery. The literature review section suggests that water can be taken as an intersection, which could take into account of these aforementioned topics, following an interdisciplinary approach by combining urban morphology and urban political ecology in urban studies. This section reviews the concepts, approaches, limitations, and implications of traditional urban morphology, and discusses how urban political ecology, as a perspective to thinking and narration rather than a subject seeking its own distinct theory, could contribute to the development of urban morphology (or more specifically, the Conzenian urban morphology) and urban design. This research first looks to the field of urban morphology, mainly the Conzenian urban morphology, for theoretical and methodological references. The Conzenian historico-geographical approach has been well-established and widely disseminated in the past nine decades, and it provides many valuable concepts and approach for mapping and understanding the evolving urban landscape from a holistic perspective, no matter whatever scale and context the study object is. However, with its origins in geographical studies, it is weakly represented in landscape design and management, although several scholars have advocated for its feasibility and significance to these fields during the past two decades. Among its various concepts, the fringe belt (FB), both as a concept with which to view urban development and a dynamic spatial structure of towns and cities, proves a valuable topic for both morphological study and urban design, especially concerning the design and management of the blue-green spaces and green infrastructure during urban landscape revitalization. Thus, this research essentially takes the Conzenian historico-geographical approach and the fringe-belt research for mapping and understanding the waterscape and blue-green infrastructure evolution, socio-spatial changes, and their interconnections, in seeking design proposals for urban landscape revitalization. Second, while seeking inclusive regeneration proposals, urban political ecology (UPE) would be an unavoidable field if this research is to explore the interrelations between water, topography, infrastructure, and urban form without glossing over the underlying complex social-political dynamics. The UPE focuses on taking infrastructure, especially water-related infrastructure, as a lens for examining the contesting metabolism processes of cities. Due to the paramount importance of water during urban metabolism, UPE scholarship rearranges the position of water (infrastructure) from a typically discursive, apolitical, and neutral layer of the urban form left for engineers to a significant underlying layer—as a battlefield of power interactions among various groups of agencies during urban resource distribution, recycling, and competition—for critical urban studies. Taking water (infrastructure) as a critical lens for understanding the uneven socio-ecological processes and the production of uneven urban environments may provide a complementary perspective to morphological studies. As urban morphology is concentrating more on exploring the power relations of agents and agencies during shaping the urban fabric (Larkham and Conzen, 2014), urban morphology shares and may share more common ground with the UPE thinking. The following part takes the UNESCO cultural-historical city Quanzhou (mainly the historic city) in China as an exemplifying case for investigating whether or not and how such an interdisciplinary approach could contribute to the urban landscape study and design during urban revitalization. Following the Conzenian historico-geographical approach and fringe-belt research from a blue-green infrastructure (or green infrastructure) perspective, the first section explores the interconnections of the uncoordinated redevelopment of the inner fringe belt, disintegration of the historical blue-green system, and socio-spatial and environmental problems in Quanzhou historic city. Based on the findings from such morphological mapping and analysis, this research evaluates the design and practices of urban landscape revitalization in Quanzhou during the past four decades, revealing some common deficiencies and problems that have persisted but have been overlooked not only in Quanzhou but possibly in many other regions during urban landscape revitalization. In response, an integrated spatial strategy is proposed to restore the connectivity, accessibility, multi-scale, and multi-functionality of its inner fringe belt as the urban green infrastructure, with the aim of conserving the historical blue-green system for a more socio-environmentally ecological strategy during its urban landscape revitalization. This part of the case study, in turn, develops the fringe-belt research, through investigating the understudied relationships of the fringe belt and green infrastructure, as well as the potential of a fringe belt as an operational entity during urban design. Accompanied with the disintegration of the historical blue-green infrastructural system in the historic city is the gradual water modernization process. As a primary element related to the quality of the built environment, public policy, and social services, water infrastructure is viewed as an analytical lens through whose construction and retrofitting the intentions and conflicts of different groups, as well as the efficacy of urban revitalization, can be discerned. Following the UPE perspective, the second section of the case study focuses on the enclaved modernization of water infrastructure in the historic city, which to some degree reflects the uneven development and regeneration of the historic city. Through observation of small-scale water-related socio-spatial changes following an ethnographic approach, the power relationships of various groups of participants get unraveled and some overlooked aspects during urban landscape revitalization in the historic city are presented. This section displays a collage of the effects of urban revitalization in the historic city that deviates from the official discourse; and presents the need for clarifying the understanding and narrations of the public/governmental and private realms and responsibilities, as well as a more inclusive and collaborative planning and design approach during urban landscape revitalization.