WORK WITH AND BY NATURE: THE ESSENCE OF TERRITORIAL SPATIAL PLANNING AND ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION

Abstract

Through his recent visits to three cities facing severe and challenging living environment, the author had a deeper insight into the symbiosis between human and nature. In Mexico City, the capital of Mexico, urban construction practices against floods and for water supply encroach on natural ecological infrastructure, resulting in the exhaustion of local water resource, city sinking, and erased indigenous cultural landscape of floating gardens. In Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, where water bodies are heavily polluted, scarce urban parks become the only refuge for citizens. Finally in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, estuary gates built to block floods invade the once prosperous canals, accelerating the decline of floating communities and markets and exacerbating traffic congestion and air pollution. Learning from these cases, cities must become better at territorial spatial planning and have the foresight to develop and grow while preserving and improving existing ecosystems. Essentially, territorial spatial planning and ecological restoration is to work with and by nature that would provide generous ecosystem services for humans, and, eventually, to increase people’s well-being and enhance cities’ development of sustainability.