From 1904 to 1929, Donald MacGregor, a landscape designer trained at the Royal Kew Gardens in the UK, served as the Superintendent of Parks and Open Spaces of the Shanghai International Settlement. MacGregor's tenure in Shanghai marked a pivotal period in the development of the city's public green spaces, and his contributions were instrumental in shaping the city's early landscape architecture. By introducing modern landscape design notions, developing professional nurseries, and establishing a professional management and gardening workforce, MacGregor played a crucial role in the development of a systematic green space network. This research aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of MacGregor's impact on the establishment and evolution of the green space system in the early 20th century, examining both his professional background and the various ways in which his efforts transformed the city's public parks and open spaces. This study is based on an in-depth review of archival materials from the Kew Gardens Archives, the Shanghai Municipal Archives, and a range of online databases. These sources offer original documents and records that provide valuable insights into MacGregor's professional education and early career in the UK, as well as his work in Shanghai. The research not only examines MacGregor's contributions to landscape design and park planning, but also explores his influence on nursery development, road greening projects, and team management within the context of the Shanghai International Settlement. By analyzing MacGregor's work from his education in the UK to his key achievements in Shanghai, the research seeks to clarify the significant impact he had on the city's green space system, which laid the foundation for modern urban landscaping in Shanghai. The study highlights several key areas of MacGregor's contributions, focusing on the following major aspects: his innovative landscape design, the establishment and management of nurseries for plant cultivation, the planting of roadside greenery, and the formation of a multinational management team responsible for overseeing the green spaces. Each of these areas is examined in depth, alongside evaluations and assessments from contemporary government officials, professional institutions, and MacGregor's peers. These endorsements not only reflect the high regard in which MacGregor's work was held but also underscore the lasting impact he had on the development of Shanghai's green infrastructure. In conclusion, this study argues that Donald MacGregor's contributions to the development of the green space system were transformative and far-reaching. His professional expertise, innovative design principles, and managerial skills helped to shape the city's urban landscape and laid the foundation for the development of modern urban parks and green spaces in Shanghai. His legacy as a pioneer of early 20th-century landscape architecture in Shanghai has left an indelible mark on the city, and his work continues to be an important reference point for landscape designers and urban planners today. His work remains an essential part of Shanghai's urban heritage and serves as a reminder of the importance of thoughtful and sustainable urban greening.

The construction of the natural protected area (NPA) system is a fundamental component of China's ecological civilization initiative, yet the spatial alignment between existing NPAs and regional key ecological spaces remains poorly defined, leading to exacerbated habitat isolation and landscape fragmentation. This study focuses on the Fuchun River Basin, a region covering 3,829.15 km² and spanning nine districts - including Yuhang, Xiaoshan, and Fuyang - characterized by significant ecological value and rapid urbanization. Facing the challenges of increasingly fragmented ecological land and intense human-land contradictions, this research aims to identify protection gaps and optimize the spatial configuration of NPAs by constructing a comprehensive regional ecological network. The study integrates diverse quantitative methods to ensure scientific rigor: the InVEST model was first employed to evaluate four key ecosystem services, specifically water yield, soil conservation, carbon sequestration, and habitat quality. Simultaneously, cultural services were quantified through a Python-based accessibility analysis of recreation points using Gaode Map API data to account for the "intangible" value of the landscape. Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) was subsequently applied to identify core landscape patches, and 25 ecological sources totaling 557.39 km² (representing 14.56% of the basin) were selected based on a patch importance index (dPC) threshold of greater than 0.5. To develop a scientific resistance surface, Spatial Principal Component Analysis (SPCA) was utilized to determine the weights of seven resistance factors - including elevation, slope, land cover, NDVI, and proximity to railways and roads - effectively eliminating data redundancy and avoiding the subjectivity of manual weighting. Utilizing circuit theory and the linkage mapper tool, the study extracted 54 ecological corridors with a total length of 684.55 km and a combined area of 632.80 km². Furthermore, the research identified 114 critical ecological pinch points covering 8.61 km², which represent high-current density areas indispensable for maintaining regional connectivity and species flow. Spatial overlay analysis revealed significant mismatches between current conservation efforts and ecological needs: within the 650.56 km² of existing NPAs, only 173.86 km² (26.89%) overlapped with identified ecological sources, and 114.60 km² (17.62%) coincided with ecological corridors. Notably, ten key ecological sources were found to be entirely independent of the current NPA system, highlighting major protection gaps. Based on these findings, a three-tier spatial optimization framework is proposed: first, the designation of Strict Protection Zones (280 km²) at the intersection of the ecological network and existing NPAs, where human interference is strictly prohibited and buffer zones are established to maintain stable natural succession; second, the identification of Ecological Restoration Zones (370 km²) in areas where ecosystem services are degraded, requiring near-natural restoration, agricultural remediation, and restricted development; and third, the delimitation of Potential Protection Zones (386.73 km²) to incorporate high-value sources and pinch points currently lacking protection by merging adjacent areas or establishing "stepping stones" for migrating species. This study adopts a systemic ecological network perspective to provide scientific evidence and categorized management suggestions for NPA integration under the "One Map" territorial planning framework, offering profound practical guidance for enhancing regional ecological stability.

Under the "dual carbon" goals, urban parks, as important green infrastructure, play an increasingly prominent role in addressing climate change through their carbon sequestration functions. Research has shown that plants in green spaces can absorb a portion of carbon emissions in urban areas, achieving carbon neutrality when the carbon sequestration capacity of plants offsets the carbon emissions. However, the timing of when park green spaces can achieve carbon neutrality has been rarely studied, and existing research faces limitations in guiding engineering practices. Despite numerous scholars calculating annual carbon sequestration rates, the growth rate of trees is not linearly increasing, and current studies often overlook the massive embedded carbon emissions from park buildings despite their small footprint, leading to incomplete assessments. This study aims to develop a carbon neutrality timing prediction model based on the bill of quantities. To ensure the model's applicability across different climate zones, we collected engineering quantity lists and design drawings from 20 park projects in eastern and southern China, extracting seedling specifications, quantities, and building material data. We calculated the carbon sequestration increment of each tree within a specified period based on the diameter at breast height (DBH) - biomass allometric growth equation, and established a fitting equation with the increment of DBH (ΔDBH). The model utilizes the Chapman-Richards growth equation to simulate the non-linear growth process of trees, accounting for the fact that tree growth rates decrease with age rather than maintaining linear progression. Subsequently, by setting the carbon emissions from buildings in the park as the target, we used the fitting equation to solve for the remaining ΔDBH and infer the duration of tree growth required to achieve carbon neutrality, thereby predicting the timing of carbon neutrality. The specifications of trees and buildings in two virtual parks (A and B) are based on project data from parks in eastern and southern China and are applied in the validation of the prediction model. After data standardization, Parks A and B showed carbon sequestration capacities of 2,371.65 and 2,156.29 t, respectively, while their building carbon emissions reached 6,485.64 and 6,198.42 t, respectively. Current carbon sequestration only offsets approximately 35% of building carbon emissions in both parks. The results indicate that the predicted dates for both parks to achieve carbon neutrality (October 2038 and April 2035) are significantly later than the dates predicted directly based on linear carbon sequestration rates (April 2032 and May 2030), with error margins of 56.7% and 57.7%, respectively. Park A requires an additional 9.8 cm DBH growth per tree, while Park B needs 8.9 cm growth per tree. Economic analysis revealed that the total construction costs (seedlings + building materials) were 15.84 million and 20.26 million yuan for Parks A and B, respectively, with current ecological economic benefits of 3.46 million and 3.15 million yuan, indicating that ecological benefit balance points would be reached earlier than carbon neutrality timing. The study integrated the data processing and calculation workflow into a Python-based software tool, enabling automated analysis from engineering list import to result visualization. This paper emphasizes that achieving carbon neutrality solely through tree carbon sinks requires an extremely long time period, and the carbon neutrality duration can be significantly shortened by using local materials and zero-carbon building materials such as Cross Laminated Timber (CLT). When different proportions of conventional building materials are replaced with CLT, the carbon neutrality timeline can be substantially reduced, with complete replacement potentially achieving immediate carbon neutrality. This research provides a carbon neutrality prediction model and methodology for urban park development, which can be directly calculated based on the bill of quantities, significantly reducing workload and offering practical guidance for optimizing solutions for enterprises and decision-makers in low-carbon oriented park design and management.

Drawing on phenomenological theory and concrete cases of socially engaged design, this article seeks to describe an action script termed "Leveraging (Qiaodong)", offering a theoretical perspective for attending to and understanding seemingly localized and small-scale social actions that nonetheless have the potential to generate ongoing change, such as beginning to cultivate a garden on an unused plot of land. Such actions do not usually originate from clearly defined, comprehensive plans. Instead, they emerge in situations where people confront limited conditions, insufficient resources, or complex social problems that cannot be directly resolved. Rather than aiming to "solve" problems, actors initiate actions that are immediately doable and capable of being taken up in the present, gradually reopening possibilities for further action. In the process of continuing to do things, actors often develop a sense of guidance or handiness, which is a feeling of "there are more things to do". This sense does not arise from certainty about outcomes, but from a directional momentum that takes shape through action itself. It helps reorganize attention toward one's surroundings and toward others, sustaining engagement amid uncertainty. Through such processes, localized actions may become noticeable to others, invite participation, and elicit responses, thereby gradually stimulating broader forms of public collaboration and the emergence of public life. The central question of this article is how such seemingly minor, low-threshold actions accumulate social effects over time, reorganize attention, and respond to long-standing social problems that are structurally complex and resistant to direct solutions. Theoretically, this article situates itself within contemporary discussions of co-design, while entering into dialogue with phenomenological traditions associated with Heidegger, Ingold, and Gibson. The discussion is grounded in a series of concrete cases observed or participated in by the author between 2022 and 2024, including socially engaged design initiatives such as community gardening, publicly engaged art projects, and design workshops. The articulation of leveraging as an action script is not intended to introduce a new method for participatory design. Rather, it aims to provide conceptual language for an action mode that is already widely present in everyday life and professional practice, yet often remains under-theorized. By foregrounding leveraging, the article seeks to support readers in becoming more attentive to how one action gives rise to another, and how action unfolds through mutual responsiveness within concrete situations. To elaborate on this script, the article addresses three interrelated questions. The first two concern epistemology: how can we narrate change as it unfolds through action without reducing it to linear causality, and how can small-scale actions in everyday life be taken seriously as forms of design practice? The third question concerns the ethics of action: when social problems cannot be directly solved, should the responsibility of design still be framed in terms of problem-solving, or should it instead be understood as a sustained capacity to respond to concrete lived situations?

With China's urban development transitioning from incremental expansion to a phase characterized by stock renewal and quality improvement, the principle of "cities should be built by the people and for the people" has become a fundamental guiding principle for contemporary urban governance and spatial production. Within this context, the concept of People's Garden has emerged as a critical response from the discipline of landscape architecture to the demands of people-centered urban transformation. By shifting the focus from elite-oriented landscape production toward everyday spaces shaped, used, and maintained by ordinary citizens, People's Garden reorients landscape practice toward livelihood needs, social participation, and grassroots governance. This paper systematically traces the ideological origins and practical evolution of People's Garden, situating it within both Chinese and international traditions of public space creation and civic participation. In the Chinese context, its roots can be found in vernacular practices of spontaneous spatial construction and the longstanding cultural notion of "sharing landscapes with the people", evident in early public garden traditions and informal, community-based landscape making. In Western contexts, comparable traditions include ancient public groves, the rise of urban parks during industrialization, and later bottom-up movements such as community gardens and civic environmental activism. Together, these diverse historical trajectories reveal a shared pursuit of publicness, participation, and collective stewardship of everyday landscapes. Building on this historical review, the study further examines the transition of landscape architecture from elite and symbolic garden forms to modern public parks, and ultimately toward contemporary participatory landscapes. While modern public parks marked an important step toward openness and accessibility, they largely remained products of top-down planning processes in which citizens were passive users rather than active creators. People's Garden, formally articulated in China in 2024, represents a qualitative shift beyond these earlier models. It integrates the principles of the People-Centered City with current social conditions of urban regeneration, emphasizing residents' subjectivity, multi-actor collaboration, and the embedding of landscape practices within daily life. From a theoretical perspective, the paper constructs an analytical framework for People's Garden by drawing on landscape architecture theory, sociology, and anthropology. Concepts such as People-oriented, the Public Sphere, Social Capital, Daily Life, and Place-making provide intellectual support for understanding how People's Garden functions not merely as a spatial form, but as a social process. Empirically, the study reviews 26 representative cases from China and abroad, covering a wide range of scales and contexts, including national parks, urban parks, community gardens, and micro-regeneration projects. Based on the leading actors and participation mechanisms involved, these cases are classified into three main practice models: government-led initiatives, multi-stakeholder co-governance practices, and resident-initiated self-organized actions. To support comparative analysis, a three-dimensional evaluative framework is developed, focusing on government support, citizen participation, and collaborative networks. This framework helps reveal the gradual shift from state-dominated provision toward deeper forms of civic engagement and self-governance. Drawing on the comparative analysis of these cases, the paper synthesizes a practical pathway for People's Landscape structured around the integrated principles of co-construction, co-governance, and sharing. Co-construction emphasizes the establishment of collaborative platforms that integrate governmental guidance, professional expertise, social organizations, market resources, and residents' local knowledge. Co-governance focuses on institutionalizing participatory mechanisms throughout the entire life cycle of landscape projects, from planning and construction to long-term management, thereby ensuring sustainability and collective responsibility. Sharing highlights the equitable distribution of ecological, social, and cultural benefits, transforming landscape outcomes into tangible improvements in everyday life, community cohesion, and environmental well-being. In conclusion, People's Garden represents a fundamental reorientation of landscape architecture in contemporary China - from the creation of designed objects toward the cultivation of people-centered processes of spatial governance. By embedding landscape practices within everyday life and empowering citizens as co-creators and co-managers, People's Garden contributes to the enhancement of urban environmental quality, the strengthening of social capital, and the advancement of grassroots governance. Although the concept is still in an exploratory stage and faces challenges related to classification, scalability, and long-term institutional support, it offers significant potential for supporting high-quality urban development and improved quality of life under the framework of Chinese modernization. As such, People's Garden provides both theoretical insights and practical guidance for realizing the vision of the People-Centered City and advancing sustainable urban futures.

The cognitive process of Chinese gardens in the West is like a painting of ups and downs. With the changes of the times and the evolution of communication channels, it has gone through a tortuous process from praise to criticism, and finally returned to rationality. In this long and complex journey of cognition, the turning point of the early 20th century was particularly crucial. With the specialized investigation of architectural art and the widespread application of photography technology, the Western academic community opened a new chapter in the study of Chinese gardens, and a series of garden monographs emerged one after another. Among them, Florence Lee Powell's In the Chinese Garden became a brilliant pearl in the history of cross-cultural communication with its unique perspective and presentation. This paper aims to deeply analyze the unique position and value of the book In the Chinese Garden in the Western understanding of Chinese gardens from the perspective of cross-cultural communication, by examining the author's life, writing purpose, discourse structure, discourse style, and the use of photographs. By examining the research of Florence Lee Powell, we can have a more comprehensive, fair, and objective understanding of the profound cultural heritage of Chinese gardens. Florence Lee Powell, a foreign teacher with an infinite passion for Chinese culture, was deeply attracted to Chinese culture during her teaching period at Suzhou Jinghai Women's Normal School in 1926, and began to explore and record Chinese gardens in depth. She captured the beauty of Suzhou Lingering Garden and Lion Grove Garden with her feminine delicacy and sensitivity, engraving every detail of these two classic gardens into the memory of history. In 1943, she compiled these precious images and profound insights into a formal book for publication. This work is not only a heartfelt tribute to Chinese garden art, but also a successful practice in cross-cultural dialogue, opening a unique window for Western readers to explore the beauty of Chinese gardens. In terms of discourse structure, In the Chinese Garden demonstrates a rigorous academic style and clear logical clues. At the beginning, Florence Lee Powell sincerely explained the original intention and historical background of writing this book, laying a guiding stone for readers to reach the hall of Chinese classical garden art. Subsequently, as an almost tour guide, she led readers to explore the deep secrets of the Lingering Garden and Lion Grove Garden step by step according to the actual tour route. The clever combination of floor plans and sequence photos in the book makes readers feel as if they are walking among the gardens themselves. They can not only intuitively feel the ingenuity and harmony of the garden layout, but also understand the profound cultural connotations and symbolic meanings behind each scenery through delicate and meticulous textual explanations. This narrative strategy, which combines graphics and text, greatly enhances the readability and attractiveness of books, providing Western readers with an unprecedented perspective to understand and appreciate the subtleties of Chinese garden art. In the application and analysis of photos, Florence Lee Powell demonstrated extraordinary aesthetic insight. She is skilled in using central composition techniques, cleverly utilizing doors, windows, doorways, and even natural branches in the garden as the framework of the picture, not only guiding the viewer's visual focus, but also endowing the photo with deeper aesthetic connotations. By accurately capturing the details of the garden, whether it is the intricate textures on the rockery, the exquisite patterns on the leaky windows, or even the delicate tiles on the roof, they are all recorded one by one by Florence Lee Powell's lens, allowing Western readers to experience the delicacy and delicacy of Chinese gardens up close, as if crossing time and space, and personally touching the physical objects that carry heavy historical and cultural memories, experiencing a spiritual baptism and cultural exploration. The innovative value of In the Chinese Garden is not only reflected in filling the gap in Western research on the Chinese landscape system, but more importantly, as a successful case of cross-cultural communication, it provides valuable methodological inspiration for later scholars and researchers. The combination of sequential photography and textual description used in the book not only deepens the Western world's understanding and appreciation of Chinese garden art, but also opens up new paths for the fields of garden photography, recording, and analysis. This work builds a bridge connecting Eastern and Western cultures through its unique discourse logic and rich visual materials, promoting mutual understanding and respect between the two civilizations. To this day, In the Chinese Garden still shines with its immortal academic brilliance and cultural value. The photos in the book, as precious historical witnesses, not only provide intuitive visual materials for scholars to study the historical evolution of Chinese gardens, but also provide important references for the protection, restoration, and inheritance of modern gardens. In the wave of globalization, we must cherish and inherit this cultural treasure that transcends national borders, so that the unique charm of Chinese gardens can continue to shine on the stage of world culture and become a common spiritual wealth of all mankind.

As China's urban development gradually shifts from scale expansion to the stage of optimizing and renewing the existing stock, the core goal of urban greening construction has changed from merely increasing the area of green space to enhancing the quality of space and the efficiency of public services. This transformation has made strengthening the public participation mechanism an urgent need for current urban greening work. Against this backdrop, the urban public green space construction model with the core concept of "People's Garden" has emerged. It emphasizes a green governance path oriented towards residents' demands and jointly built by multiple subjects, becoming an important exploration direction to solve the problem of the disconnection between traditional green space construction and public demands. However, at present, the practice of public participation in the construction of urban green Spaces in our country still faces many challenges - there are operational difficulties such as the lack of standardized guidelines for the participation process and the unsmooth feedback channels for residents' demands, as well as institutional shortcomings such as the ambiguous definition of the rights and responsibilities of the participating subjects in policies and regulations and the insufficiency of incentive mechanisms. The overall implementation path has not yet formed a clear framework. The relevant supporting institutional system is in urgent need of systematic improvement. As a typical example of public-participatory green space construction on a global scale, Setagaya Ward in Tokyo, Japan, has been focusing on the needs of urban refined management since the 1990s. Through a combination of policy guidance, mechanism innovation, and community mobilization, it has systematically promoted the institutionalization and systematization of the entire construction process. After more than three decades of practical exploration, A public-participatory green space construction model that is both operational and has demonstration value has been formed. This study conducts in-depth exploration around three core dimensions: First, it systematically sorts out the development trajectory of public participation in green space construction in Japan, from the rise of civic movements to the transformation of community building after the bubble economy, clarifying the changes in policy-driven and social demands at different stages; Secondly, taking Setanagaya District as the empirical research object, through literature analysis and field investigation, the organizational structure of its public participation in green space construction is analyzed in detail, and the policy framework including the detailed implementation rules of the "Urban Park Law", district-level special regulations, and the community building subsidy system is systematically sorted out. And summarize its supporting system in terms of fundraising, technical guidance, publicity and promotion, etc. Thirdly, for the key hub organization, Setagaya Trust & Community Design, core members were selected to conduct semi-structured in-depth interviews. A comprehensive assessment and reflection were carried out on its green space construction practices from dimensions such as practical effectiveness, existing challenges, and sustainability. Summarize successful experiences and room for improvement. Based on the above research, this paper ultimately returns to the reflection on the construction of "People's Gardens" in our country. In light of local realities, it puts forward targeted suggestions from three aspects: policy improvement, organizational optimization, and action innovation. At the policy level, it is necessary to accelerate special legislation to clarify the rights and responsibilities of participants. At the organizational level, a cross-departmental collaborative platform should be established to promote resource integration. At the action level, it is necessary to stimulate residents' continuous participation motivation through capacity building and cultural cultivation, thereby providing practical references for the construction of public-participatory green Spaces in the context of urban stock renewal in China.

In recent decades, contemporary urban renewal has gradually moved away from the conventional paradigm of large-scale demolition and reconstruction and has entered a phase characterized by incremental development and fine-grained spatial intervention. As the basic spatial and social unit of the city, the community plays a critical role in supporting refined urban development, maintaining social cohesion, and safeguarding residents' everyday well-being. In parallel with this shift, the governance model of co-construction, co-governance, and co-sharing, which emphasizes the integration of diverse social resources and the active involvement of residents, has become a widely adopted approach in both policy discourse and practical implementation. Although a wide range of flexible and participatory community renewal initiatives have been launched in recent years, many of these projects encounter difficulties in sustaining spatial quality and social vitality over time, often due to limited maintenance capacity and the absence of long-term operational mechanisms. In response to these challenges, this study conducted a community garden co-creation experiment at the Neighborly Gate Garden in Shanghai, using it as an empirical case to explore whether micro-renewal practices guided by participatory principles and a sustainability-oriented framework can effectively support the long-term operation and stewardship of community spaces. Grounded in sustainability theory, the research established a four-dimensional analytical framework encompassing ecological sustainability, cultural-spiritual sustainability, economic sustainability, and social sustainability. This framework was employed to structure both the design of the experiment and the subsequent evaluation of its outcomes. Methodologically, the study adopted a mixed research approach that combined interdisciplinary analysis with participatory observation, enabling a systematic documentation of the planning process, implementation stages, and post-intervention conditions of the community garden. The findings indicate that public participation informed by sustainability principles can significantly enhance residents' willingness to engage in community affairs, reduce the financial burden on local governments, and improve short-term site maintenance outcomes. However, the study also reveals that the capacity of self-organized groups to independently sustain long-term maintenance remains limited. Longitudinal observations suggest that enduring stewardship of community micro-spaces still depends on continuous policy support, institutional guidance, and stable resource input from the top down. The experiment further reveals that participants of different ages and identities demonstrated distinct levels of engagement at various stages; public activities with artistic or general attributes were more effective in stimulating participation among residents and children than those requiring specialized expertise; and a degree of positive correlation emerged between the condition of site maintenance and residents' digital engagement in community platforms. Based on the empirical observations and the organizational experience accumulated during the experiment, the study proposes a set of strategies with potential transferability and replicability. These include ecological sustainability strategies focused on strengthening residents' ecological knowledge, establishing designated points for sustainable material sorting, and recommending appropriate sustainable materials; cultural-spiritual strategies that clarify organizational pathways across different participation stages and foster a shared sense of belonging among diverse groups; economic sustainability strategies that emphasize multi-actor governance, cost optimization, and the diversification of community-based economic activities; and social sustainability strategies that integrate top-down policy support, bottom-up self-organization, and the cultivation of responsible teams and community compacts. Through the design of this co-creation experiment and the articulation of strategies within a four-dimensional sustainability framework, this study aims to enhance the artistic, public, and sustainable qualities of community micro-spaces and to provide practical insights for future research and community renewal practice.