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Belt and Road Workshop with Duke University

Duke-Kunshan University, together with Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and Center for International and Global Studies, hosted a conference on Environmental, Geostrategic, and Economic Dimensions of the Silk Road Economic Belt from 12-17 October, 2018. Following two days on economic and policy dimensions, a three-day session called "Developing Spatial Solutions to Environmental Impacts of Infrastructure Development" brought together participants from government, academia, multilateral banks, NGOs, and technology firms with ongoing projects and studies related to China's Belt and Road Initiative. Ashley Scott Kelly presented "Engaging infrastructure development through critical design practice: Campaigns in Southeast Asia", which showcased his geospatial-focused projects on design and impact assessment.

Abstract for Ashley's talk

Engaging infrastructure development through critical design practice: Campaigns in Southeast Asia
Ashley Scott Kelly, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong

Large-scale development, such as road-building, often progresses slowly, outlasting governments, evading principled environmental legislation, and changing investors, scopes, and designs. Conservation efforts here require sustained momentum and diverse forms of practice and expertise that can facilitate informed decision-making, importantly in the absence of otherwise crucial information. Through a cultural-technological campaign, which includes a species-specific road design manual, downscaled wildlife movement and ecosystem services modelling, 3D-printed stakeholder engagement models, and automated geospatial investigations and counter-assessments, this lecture will showcase transdisciplinary approaches and opportunities for landscape architecture to proactively engage development. Such engagement, whether it's applied, advocacy-, activist-, or action-oriented in development, raises important contradictions that result in considerable institutional, academic, disciplinary, and practical challenges. Carried out by landscape designers in collaboration with policy experts, biologists and geographers, this work offers an urgently needed model of design collaboration and has been disseminated to national and regional levels of government, developers, civil society, and agencies across South and Southeast Asia.

Duke-Kunshan University Belt and Road Workshop, 2018.
Duke-Kunshan University Belt and Road Workshop, 2018.

www.designforconservation.org/news/belt-road-workshop-with-duke-university

Posted by: (Design for Conservation)