Introduction

This page aims to showcase the work of our team(Group 3) on neighbourhood analysis in Lotus village No. 1. The main parts include: 

  • Drama
  • Poster Mindmaps
  • Background of Lotus Village No. 1
  • Location Map
  • Log about the roll allocation & research process
  • Methods we adopted
  • Neighborhood Analysis through different aspects, including ①People and Community; ②Local enterprise; ③Access to local facilities; ④Movement; ⑤Energy; ⑥Water; ⑦Food; ⑧Materials; ⑨Biodiversity.
  • Summary of our analysis
  • Workshop Image Gallery
  • Recommendations

Drama —— The opportunity neighbourhood planning

Download Drama Play~4.mp4 [64.57MB]
Details

Poster Mindmaps

Week 2 (Poster 06 —— Engaging young people): 

Mind map.jpg.1

 

Week 3 (Poster 13 —— Stories from the front line):

Mind map.jpg.2

 

Week 4 (Poster 14 —— Taking a leadership role: Moving beyond saying no!):

Mind map ①.jpg      Mind map ②.jpg

 

Week 5 (Poster 16 —— The opportunity neighbourhood planning):

Mind map①.jpg      Mind map②.jpg

Background

Research area: Lotus Village Area 1

Lotus Village Area 1 is located in the Suzhou Industrial Park, Xietang. It was built by Fenfeng Jianfa real estates co., LTD., Suzhou Industrial Park, with a total construction area of 152,300 m², an area of 108,785 m² and a total of 2,679 houses. The residential property company is Lotus community property company. The medial treatment, education and shopping infrastructure around Lotus Village are relatively preferable, and the activity rooms for the old, farmer’s market, small shops and children’s activity area within the community are also reasonably distributed and convenient.

Location Map

Details

Log

Roll allocation of different aspects:

  • Chennan Wang 1717042 —— Access to local facilities
  • Xinyun Fan 1717400 —— Movement
  • Ranlingfan Yang 1718403 —— Biodiversity
  • Wenting Yan 1718373——  Food
  • Jiahui Wu 1717930 —— Energy
  • Mengwen Liu 1717063—— Water
  • Yirui Liu 1717014—— People and Community
  • Yi Liu 1715731 —— Material
  • Zehui Zhao 1613917—— Local enterprise

Process:

Before starting the field trip: Read the site's general information provided by the teacher. Watch the videos, powerpoints and readings uploaded on ice to get familiar with each aspects we need to pay attention to when doing site visit.

1st Field Trip(2019-03-16): The purpose of this visit was to become familiar with the community through real perception. Following the teachers, we wandered around the community, taking photos to recognize social activities and the physical enviroment. In addition, Chennan has met two townsmen and asked them about their feelings of living in the neighbourhood.

After the 1st site visit: Share findings within the group and summarize the achievements. By comparing with the critieria in the Readers, we then discuss what information is missing or not clear enough so that we can improve it in the next field trip. Additionally, in order to better understand the life feelings of local residents, our group made a questionair to collect their opinions.

2nd Field Trip(2019-04-05): Hand out questionaires, as well as do some interviews to collect local residents' opinions.

After the 2nd site visit: Integrate and generalize the information, and then, discuss the problems we identified and rank them based on our research results. Additonally, we made a model and illustrated it to the invited residents in class, so we can have a more comprehensive idea about how to improve the neighbourhood. Finally, we work together to figure our some possibly feasible solutions.

 

Methods

  • Photography
  • Questionaire: We picked 23 community residents by opportunity to fill out the questionaire.

有关居民社区生活感受的调查 / Survey on neighbourhood feelings

本问卷旨在通过调查莲花新村一区居民对于社区环境、社区资源的满意度,以及居民的生活情况以及居住感受,发现社区规划中存在的问题,为进行更好的社区改进而服务。/ This questionnaire aims to investigate the residents' satisfaction with the community environment and community resources in the first district of lianhua new village, as well as the residents' living conditions and living feelings, find out the problems in the community planning, and serve for better community improvement.

 

个人信息 / Personal information

1. 您的性别 / Gender:

○男 / Male

○女 / Female

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. 您的年龄段 / Age group:

○<18

○18~25

○26~30

○31~40

○41~50

○51~60

○>60

 

3. 人口来源 / Population source:

○本地人 / Native

○外地人 / Outlander

 

4. 您目前从事的职业 / Occupation:

_________________________________________________________________________________

 

5. 您的月收入 / Income:

○<2000

○2000~4000

○4000~6000

○>6000

 

6. 您在这里生活多久了 / How long have you been living in this neighbourhood?

○<1年 / <1 year

○1~3年 / 1~3 years

○3~5年 / 3~5 years

○5~10年 / 5~10 years

○>10年 / >10 years

 

7. 您在这里生活多久了 / How long have you been living in this neighbourhood?

○<1年 / <1 year

○1~3年 / 1~3 years

○3~5年 / 3~5 years

○5~10年 / 5~10 years

○≥11年 /  ≥11 years

 

主要问题 / Main questions:

8. 请您对社区中以下几个方面进行评价 / Please rate the following aspects of the community:

 

非常不满意 / Very dissatisfied

不满意 / Not satisfied

一般 / Normal

满意 / Satisfied

非常满意 / Very satisfied

人与社区 / People and Community

地方企业(社区及周边商业) / Local enterprise

社区及周边基础设施 / Access to local facilities

出行便捷度 / Movement

能源使用 / Energy

水资源 / Water

食品 / Food

材料 / Materials

生物多样性 / Biodiversity

 

9. 您在这里有属于自己的社区朋友或邻居网络和团体吗 / Do you have your own network of friends and neighbors?

没有。 / None.

有,但较少。 / Yes, but just a lew.

○有属于自己的朋友圈。 / Definitely yes.

有很多。 / Yes and with a lot many.

 

10. 如果您去过以下目的地,那您平时的出行方式是 / If you have been to the following destinations, how do you usually travel to them:

 

步行 / On foot

骑自行车 / By bike

骑电动或摩托车 / By e-bike or motorcycle

开车 / By car

乘坐公共交通 / By public transport

幼儿园 / Kindergarten

小学、中学 / Primary or Middle school

卫生站 / Health Center

小超市 / Local shops

社区活动中心 / Community Center

邮局 / Post Office

商场 / Shopping Mall

休闲娱乐场所 / Leisure & Entertaiment Venues

 

11. 您对待废弃物的处理方法 / The method you use to tackle with the castoff?

○直接扔掉 / Throw away directly.

○找人修理 / Find others to have it repaired.

○自己修理 / Repaired it by yourself.

○其他,例如 / Others, such as ____________________________.

 

12. 您认为在该社区生活有什么不方便之处吗?如果有,请说明 / What do you find inconvenient about community life? If so, please specify:

○Yes, ______________________________________________________________________.

○No.

 

13. 在您居住在该社区期间,您感觉社区发生了什么变化吗?如果有,请说明 / Did you feel any changes in the community during you live here? If so, please specify:

○Yes, ______________________________________________________________________.

○No.

 

14. 如果社区将进行改造,您最期望改进的方面是什么 / If the community were to be transformed, what would you most expect to improve?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

 

  • Interview:

During our field trip, we interviewed six residents of different ages and social groups, including an old man, a six-year-old child, a housewife, an office worker, a community staff and a shop owner. All the questions asked were about their feelings to the following aspects.

During our workshop, we interviewed more than 10 residents who engaged in our activities, asking for their opinions and suggestions for improvements to our community renovation plan.

  • Literature review (Include the experience of previous successful examples or concepts and what we learnt through posters interpretation)
  • Neighourhood analysis
  • Mapping
  • Holding workshop with residents

During the workshop, several participatory methods, including Pin Card, Planning for Real, World Cafe, to get people involved.

People and Community

The appraisal of the aspect of people and community is based mainly on the 23 samples of random survey.

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            Figure 1.3: Old ladies gathered in the square to chat   

 

Aging community:

Based on these charts, it seems that people over the age of fifty occupy a large percentage (see Figure 1.1) and most of the residents surveyed belong to the permanent group which live here for more than five or ten years (see Figure 1.2). Combined with the above two points, the aging of the community seems to be evident. There are almost always elderly people gathered together in the central public square (see Figure 1.3). We knew from interviews that they were chatting to wait the time to pick up their grandchildren from school.

 

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Segregation between different groups:

The number of the outlander is similar to the native (see Figure 1.4). The local people mainly come from the resettled population and most of them are old people. Outlanders mainly include office workers and parents who help them take care of their children.

The vast majority of residents have their own social capital in this community (see figure 1.5). However, it seems that there is resistance between different groups of residents. 

[Interview collection]

  • A group of old ladies with an average age of 57-60:

They belong to the resettlement residents. Although they have retired, they still work as cleaners because of the low old-age pension. They strongly objected to the small shops that served as chess rooms in the neighborhood, where many people played mahjong for money.

  • An old man who runs a small shop:

He is generally satisfied with his current life. Although retired, he makes money by selling cigarettes and drinks along with providing the chess and card room which also as a result of knowing some friends. He said it would be better if the community could provide some commercial housing for small private businesses.

 

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Figure 1.7: Individual small shops in ground floor

 

Community

Through the interview, it seems that the majority of the residents have general satisfying experience of community life (see Figure 1.6), but the public entertainment facilities, type of house and connections with surrounding neighbourhood communities are relatively single. However, the residents appear to have their own solutions. They transform the ground floor non-motor parking room into some small shops (see Figure 1.7) or the chess and card rooms. In the larger space between two buildings, there are also wooden plank houses served as the restaurant (see Figure 1.8). For ease of access, they also create small doors at the boundary fence of the community (see Figure 1.9). In this sense, residents are creative about their communities, which could be the inspiration for us to consider how to apply their ability to community renewal projects.

 

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            Figure 1.8: Wooden-plank houses between buildings

 

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                    Figure 1.9: Small doors at the border fence

 

Local enterprise

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          Figure2.1: Monthly income of the respondents

 

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Figure 2.2: The location of formal economy and informal economy in Lotus Village No.1

 

Supply and demand are the first considered in community economic activities. Lotus Village is the place that resettles landless farmers to live and the household structure is mainly composed of relocated farmers and migrants. In the field-trip questionnaire, we found that most of the respondents have low incomes and therefore little spending power. Data has shown in Figure 2.1. Because of this, economic activities of Lotus Village should be diversity and meet demand of mix of residents especially for low-income residents. Therefore, this part will focus on formal economy and informal economy by analyzing their types and location.

 

Formal economy mainly located in the central square of the community such as vegetable store, grocery store and delivery station. However, they are limited in size and type. For example, in the field-trip, we found that vegetable store was always crowded. The area of vegetable store is only 25 square meters but it is difficult to meet the demand of the nearly 20,000 residents around. In addition, according to the respondents, there is not fruit store or barbershop. Residents have demand for these services but community lacks these services supply.

 

Informal economy is mainly located on both sides of the main road of the Lotus Village and has a variety of types such as mobile vendors who sells food and clothes. According to the questionnaire, the most of the operators of informal economy are local residents and these businesses are very popular among residents because they are cheap and provide diverse community services. Informal economy activities have positive impacts on community economic activities. They not only provide more employment opportunities, more convenient services and increase the local multiplier effect, but also promote local social connection and community vitality (Barton, Grant and Guise, 2003).

 

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Figure 2.3: Informal economy and social connection

 

Access to local facilities

The accessibility to local facilities is a basic element when doing neighbourhood planning and design (Barton, Grant and Guise, 2003). In order to examine the local facilities at the Lotus Village No. 1, we draw maps to show the service catchments at local and neighbourhood levels based on Accessibility Criteria. Additionally, during our field trip, we found that the open and green spaces are rarely used by the local people. We tried to find out the reason with the knowledge learned in CDE108.

 

Firstly, as shown in figure 3.1 and 3.2, it is clear that our site is basically covered by various services. For local level, the community center which include gym, library, activity room, health station and shops can almost meet the residents’ daily demand. In terms of neighbourhood level, there are schools, banks, health center, play ground and big shopping centers which are all accessible on foot or by bike. However, although the bus station is at the walking distance to the community, we found that there is no subway station around the community.

 

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                        Figure 3.1: Facility catchment at local level

 

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                  Figure 3.2: Facility catchment at neighbourhood level

 

In addition, we found that there are quite a lot green spaces inside and outside the community. However, the majority are surrounded by bushes and are not accessible to people. Therefore, these spaces are to some extent a waste. Combined with what we learnt from CDE108, five themes are adopted to evaluate the open space in Lotus Village No. 1 (Figure 3.3).

 

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                                                      Figure 3.3: Evaluation themes to open spaces

Movement

Basic background:

Figure 4.1 is the map of general road distribution. Main roads (yellow lines) are designed for cars, buses, e-bikes and walkers with wide surface, it has traffic lights, zebra crossing and pedestrian path for people move in order. Roads inside the community are mainly for walkers, e-bikes and some cars, they are narrow but connect with each other.

 

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                  Figure 4.1: The map of Lotus Village Area 1

 

Accessibility:

From figure 4.1, the first area of Lotus village is roughly composed of residential buildings and it is clear to see there are many roads connected with each other that people can go somewhere easily. In addition, there are also many paths created on purpose (Figure 4.2), though it is not allowed and not aesthetic, it is convenient for residents. However, it is not show convenience for disabled people, although it has blind tracks bricks, it does not cover the whole of village and some of them are occupied by something else (Figure 4.3). In addition, there are only two bus stops for district 1 which the catchment is limited (Figure 4.4). It is not convenient for residents who are living in the corner far away from bus stops.

 

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           Figure 4.2: Path created on purpose                                        Figure 4.3: wastes occupies the road

 

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                      Figure 4.4: The catchment of bus stops

 

Safety:

According to figure 4.1, it has pedestrian road along the main road especially outside Lotus village and some main road inside that people do not need to worry about the safety. However, inside the community, most roads have no pedestrian road, cars, e-bikes and pedestrian use the same road and the path is not wide enough when many people on the road (Figure 4.5). In addition, there is a problem is that many cars park along the road which make the road narrower.

 

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   Figure 4.4: cars, bus and e-bike on the road

 

Viability:

We did a survey on the convenience of Lotus Village from residents. The total number of people surveyed is 20 and more than a half think it is convenient. They can go anywhere by e-bike and bus.

 

Convivial street:

From these pictures, the scenery along the road is not satisfied. The waste, cars, e-bikes, quilts drying and damaged grass make walkers feel uncomfortable.

 

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                      Figure 4.5: lawn along the road                                    Figure 4.6: Scene along the road

Energy

There are four ways for residents to get energy in the Lianhua New Village. Not all of the ways are good for environmental protection, and not all of them are enough for residents' life. This part would give the introductions to the four ways in this community.

Sunlight.

Every building has at least one solar water heater. We checked the weather in Suzhou in 2018 and made a form which shows the sunny day.  As table 5.1 shows there were only a few days can improve enough sunlight for the residents. However, using sunlight is still a good way to get energy for environment protection.

 

       Table 5.1. Sunny days of each month in Suzhou in 2018

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Natural Gas

Natural gas is a fossil fuel formed, and it is a nonrenewable resource because of the long formative time. However, when natural gas burns the harmful substances is still much less than coal burns. The composition of natural gas is 92.1% CH4, 3% C2H6, and something else. The natural gas supply is Towngas.

Coal

We noticed that residential still use the coal to cook sometimes, which could cause much smoke and make the community warmer. However, for the traditional food need the traditional cooking way, this is hard to avoid creating pollutions.

State Grid

When we interviewed residents in this community we asked about the power supply situation, all the residents said the power supply is sufficient. As figure 5.2 shows the power units are distributed everywhere. Some are new, and some of them should be maintained.

 

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                               Figure 5.2

 

In one word that in Lianhua New Village the four kinds of energy supply all useful and improve the life quality, also the natural gas and state grid are the two main energy in this community.

Water

Here are comprehensive evaluations about water resource aspects. Regarding the major advantage, Lotus Village possesses multi-purpose sources, which can be defined as blue water, green water, white water, grey water and black water (Barton et al., 2003). Firstly, according to blue water, Lotus Village is surrounded by a canal. This kind of design not only keeps the balance between human and nature but also achieves sustainability. For instance, the spatial design of Lotus Village is likely that planning fits the natural form of river rather than destroy the river. Therefore, the preservation of this river can enhance biodiversity and community image. Moreover, this community produces strong capacity in green water recycle. In figure 6.3, the drainage system can transmit rainwater from roof to green belt and the rainwater can be utilized directly in irrigation. The green belt also allow more infiltration than concrete pavements. As a result, this method saving extra cost in irrigating grasslands and conserving water resource. Finally, the white, grey and black water are from drinking, showers and baths.  

 

According to survey result from residents in Lotus Village, most residents were satisfied with the quality of domestic water. However, several residents reflected that the drain was clogged from time to time but the property in Lotus Village could settle this problem immediately. Therefore, Lotus Village possesses high water qualification.

 

  Table 6.1: water types and sources in Lotus Village

Water types

Sources

Blue water

Canal

Green water

Rainwater

Grey water

Irrigation, washing dishes, bath, showers

White water

Washing, drinking, cooking

Black water

Bath, Kitchen

 

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Figure 6.2: recognizing water checklist (Barton et al., 2003)

 

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Figure 6.3: green water recycle

 

Conversely, Lotus Village exists disadvantage in waste water treatment. Figure 6.4 and figure 6.5 shows that the residents wash dishes in bituminous streets causing the spilled water. Particularly, the white water for washing dishes are not be reused efficiently which results in unnecessary waste. Moreover, the spilled water in bituminous streets cannot be infiltrated to underground and produce negative effects on community image and amenity. The possible reason might that local residents lack the awareness of water recycle. However, several cases about optimizing water reuse can be found in other places. Vigneswaran and Sundaravadivel (2004) has demonstrated that the communities in California and Australia reuse the grey water in irrigating gardens, regarding water as a precious resource.

 

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Figure 6.4: washing dishes which results in spilled water on road    Figure 6.5: washing dishes which results in spilled water on road                

 

In short, Lotus Village processes multiple use types of water such as the river preservation and drainage system to contribute to livability. However, the community also should emphasize on promoting residents' awareness for waste water recycle.

 

Food

We also take food into consideration. There are some vegetable markets and supermarkets in or near the community. We interviewed 30 local residents and collected some information of three aspects: category, price, and location. Below are the data we have collected.


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Figure 7.1: the price of food investigation in the first district of Lotus New Village

 

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Figure 7.2: the kinds of food investigation in the first district of Lotus New Village

 

According to the result of survey, most of family would choose Auchan Supermarket which has almost 8 kilometers from the community to buy their food, not only for vegetables but also for other food. However, the residents who lives more than 10 years in the community might go to the vegetable market nearby to buy their vegetables, and to buy some other food in the community market. Moreover, the most important discovery is that the price of food which provided by market nearby both are higher than other places, according to what residents say.  

 

Actually, there are two vegetable markets and one superstore nearby. However, we still find there are some self-plant and some farmers will bring their plants to community for selling (figure 7.3 and 7.4).

 

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Figure 7.3: self-plants by local residents

               

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Figure 7.4: some farmers will bring their plants to community for selling

 

Figure 7.5 is the food map of Lotus New Village area one, which aims to point out different categories of food shops and their effect area (Barton, Grant and Ghis, 2017). It has shown that there are one large farmers market located between area one and area three, which also has be interviewed the results of expensive price and far away to some border area of district one. Additionally, many residents have complained about the freshness of vegetables in some nearby markets, especially for mothers. Some households who have cars prefer to drive to Auchan Market and the market nearby Jinji lake.

 

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           Figure 7.5: The food map of Lotus Village Area 1

 

However, we have interviewed that there are one small vegetable market plays for charity, which means it is proved that the freshness of vegetable in this market and if residents buy more they will pay less for their daily needs. As figure 7.2 shows, there are many residents especially for the olds who is living more than 10 years in this community prefer to go to this market not only for its convenience but also for its guarantee.

 

Materials

Close resource loop:

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                  Figure 8.1: a close resource loop

 

  • Repair, recover, reuse: A close resource loop is a circulation of local waste stream by repairing, recovering and reusing. During the field trip, we found that residents treat waste in different way based on its value. Normally, life waste was through into the dustbins directly. For some electric appliance such as air condition, television or washing machine, residents tend to repair them by professionals. In addition, residents have their wisdom to reuse the waste. As figure 8.2 shown, an office chair was used as a walking stick for a humpbacked elder. Therefore, the resource loops are existed in some specific kinds of waste.

 

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                    Figure 8.2: Chair was reused as a stick

 

  • Separation waste stream material:

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                   Figure 8.3: separate bins                                                                                                Figure 8.4: fabric recycling bins

 

Community has attempt to encourage residents to practice garbage sorting, which can benefit to create a viable close resource loop. However, it seems does not work due to the weakness of waste separation consciousness. During the interview, most of local residents said they have no habit of garbage sorting and the separate bins seems like a decoration.

 

Local solution:

Although the public facilities related to the resource loops or waste sorting are incomplete, there are some repair workshops in the community, which can provide various repair services on-site including textile, timber and bike. The underground garage with low rent provided repair workshops a place to start-up. Furthermore, some mobile junk dealer also contributes to a more flexible way of waste recycling.

 

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Figure 8.5: electric vehicle repair and recycling

 

Involve people:

Recycling should be the final option after exploring to repair or reuse. Compared with hardware facilities, the weakness of environmental consciousness is the main obstacle to build a sustainable community. And there are lack of effective scheme to encourage people involved the community.

Biodiversity

Figure 9.1 shows that the small public park in the community, with much hedgerows and many Chinese scholar trees, those could give shade in the summer to provide people or small animals to hide. In addition, absorb pollutants such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide and these gases can affect people with asthma and chronic lung disease. Also absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygenAnd figure 9.2 shows that there are many different kind of plant in the community. These provide birds and other wildlife and add seasonal change and interest to streets. Figure 9.3 and figure 9.4 both showed that there are many kinds of animals.

 

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                                Figure 9.1                                                                      Figure 9.2 

 

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                                Figure 9.3                                                                      Figure 9.4

Summary

Based on the above analysis from nine aspects, we reached a overall conclusion to the current situation of Lotus Village Area 1. In order to make the summary clearer, we borrowed the urban potential assessment framework. As shown in table 10.1, the most aspects of the community are ripe for further development. The biggest difficulty lies in the market, air and noise as this is a relocation community, which lacks systematic and effective property management and an attractive surrounding environment. For future development, public participation should be valued.

 

                                        Table 10.1: Illustrative chart for Lotus Village Area 1 

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Recommendations

Based on the above observation and analysis, we put forward some renovation plans. Firstly, there is a recommendation about increasing the types of formal economies in the central square of Lotus Village such as fruit store and barbershop in order to provide more convenient services for residents and increase the local multiplier effect  (Barton, Grant and Guise, 2003). Secondly, we plan to implement garbage sorting in Lotus village. These waste bins will help to increase the viability of waste reuse, recovery and recycle (Barton, 2003), thereby contributing to sustainable development. Thirdly, in order to solve road water problem on rainy days, the roads of Lotus Village will be fitted with steel slag-fly ash mixed permeable bricks (Liu, Tang &amp; Singh, 2019). This kind of material not only can transmit road water-logging that results from rainwater or domestic waste water to underground but also gets rid of the phosphorus from waste water (Liu, Tang &amp; Singh, 2019). Furthermore, we decide to replace the fence with hedgerows as back garden boundaries. Moreover, to increase biodiversity, we have come up with three plans. To diversify the garden, we are going to plant a variety of plants, from local wild flowers to non-invasive plants, such as lobular privet, southern magnolia, and evergreen shrubs, which will attract local pollinators, beneficial insects and hummingbirds to visit the garden (Salsedo, 2014). The other two ideas were to add several roof gardens and allocate the vacant ground green area in front of buildings for residents to grow vegetable on their own. Finally, we considered about widening the road between two buildings and redesigning sidewalk, parking lots and green spaces with benches and stone tables. Barton, Grant and Guise (2003) claimed that it is important to provide the accessibility of different travel modes, among which the reasonable division of walking and non-walking areas is particularly important in a community. Also, according to Handy and Clifton (2001), the attraction of different activities in specific areas to residents is also a reflection of accessibility. Therefore, it seems to be a good way to promotes the beautification of the environment and road safety.       

 

However, during the workshop, we have received various different opinions from the neighborhoods through world cafe and pin card activities. Firstly, the participating residents believed that new stores should disperse in the whole community because Lotus Village is large-scale and the dispersion shops could provide more convenient services for residents who live in different areas. Therefore, the final recommendation is diversity shops should disperse in whole Lotus Village. Next, one council member complained that residents often threw rubbish directly from their windows, while an elderly woman explained that it was because there were no bins downstairs and they did not want to walk so far to take out the rubbish. Therefore, instead of carrying out garbage sorting, the short-term focus should be on adding waste collection facilities. For example, waste containers should be set in front of every building to make sure that all households are covered by the service scope. In a long term, the community should carry out more activities to teach residents to recycle and reuse waste, and gradually improve the garbage classification facilities. In terms of the permeable bricks, although it was also committed by residents as a useful method, there is one big concern in financial resource because residents in Lotus Village expressed that they did not need to pay for property management. Therefore, the issue of financing should be consulted and voted on before construction to understand the majority residents  attitudes. In addition, we also received many complaints about chickens running around in the community, bringing a series of safety and environmental concerns. Many residents are bullish about our idea of hedges, and they suggested that we use it to restrict these animals  movement. In this way, it will not influence the image of the community, and also convenient for residents to manage these animals. Through workshop interviews, we noticed some residents already grew pumpkins on the roof. Many elderly people agreed the idea of roof gardens. However, they did not think it is feasible to adopt similar method on the ground. There are too many kids and animals who can destroy the vegetable easily. Therefore, we will only keep the idea of roof garden. Finally, several residents said that not every family had a car, so widening the sidewalk between buildings and transforming a car parking area in every two rows buildings into green spaces is possible (Figure 11.1). In addition to benches, the residents also suggested to build pavilions on the grass, which can become a shelter from sudden rain or the hot summer sun.

 

 

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                                  Figure 11.1: The final design proposal of spaces between residential buildings

Reference List

Barton, H., Grant, M., &amp; Guise, R. (2003) Shaping neighborhoods: a guide for health, sustainability and vitality. London and New York: Taylor &amp; Francis.

 

Google Maps (2019) Map of The Lotus Village Area 1 [Cartographic Material]. Available from: https://www.google.com/maps/search/莲花新村一区/@31.283065,120.742242,15.77z (Accessed: 7 April 2019).

 

Handy, S. & Clifton, K. (2001) ‘Evaluating Neighborhood Accessibility: Possibilities and Practicalities’, Journal of transportation and statistics, 28 (4), pp. 67-78, [Online]. Available from: http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/handy/JTS_paper.pdf (Accessed: 26 April 2019).

 

Liu, Y., Tang, W. & Singh, R. P. (2019) 'Study on Compressive Strength and Water Permeability of Steel Slag-Fly Ash Mixed Permeable Brick', Applied Science, 9(8), pp. 1-11 [Online]. Available from:  https://doi.org/10.3390/app9081542 (Accessed: 26 April 2019).

 

Salsedo, C. (2014) Sustainable Landscaping: Bio-diverse Gardens [Online]. Available from: http://www.sustainability.uconn.edu/sustain/biodiv/intro.html (Accessed: 26 April 2019)

 

Vigneswaran, S. & Sundaravadivel, M. (2004) Recycle and Reuse of Domestic Wastewater [Online] Available from: http://www.eolss.net/ebooks/Sample%20Chapters/C07/E2-14-01.pdf (Accessed: 4 April 2019).