The water heritage of China: the polders of Tai Lake Basin as continuing landscape

Yi-Wen Wang, John Pendlebury and Christian Nolf

Planning Perspectives, 2023, vol. 38, issue 5, 949-974

Abstract: This paper examines the long history of planned water and landscape management in China, focusing on the Tai Lake Basin located in the southern part of the Yangtze River Delta. To position this polder landscape within the broad spectrum of water heritage in China, the paper examines the historical perceptions and symbolism of water and its decisive role in shaping Chinese outlooks on empire, urban settlements and landscapes. It then delineates the evolution of polder landscapes in the Tai Lake Basin, which has been recurrently transformed since the fifth century BCE through to their contemporary condition. Despite changing material forms, the polder landscapes in the region evidence continuous endeavour to manage water for both productive (food) and preventive (flood) purposes. The latter part of the paper considers to what extent these polder landscapes might now be considered as a ‘continuing landscape’ – an organically evolved cultural landscape reflecting the changing needs of society, economy, government as well as flood prevention. Today, with few features that are materially historical, their continued existence has been threatened by urbanization, land consolidation and agricultural modernization. The paper advocates historically informed landscape planning to safeguard these dynamic and adaptive agricultural landscapes.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02665433.2022.2135131 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rppexx:v:38:y:2023:i:5:p:949-974

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rppe20

DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2022.2135131

Access Statistics for this article

Planning Perspectives is currently edited by Michael Hebbert

More articles in Planning Perspectives from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().