Hello,
This site presents projects across a multitude of topics and locations generally fielded in the design disciplines. I believe most complex problems can be mediated and advanced through design using a wide recognition of development processes and human-environment interactions.
My research and practice focus on scenario-building and filling knowledge gaps for sustainable development, especially in regions that lack adequate knowledge or transparency in development information and spatial data. I apply design methods to land change and landscape ecology, with wide expertise on the manipulation of geospatial data for the study, advocacy, design and delivery of projects in ecologically complex and contested landscapes. Recent works include design guidelines for tropical road infrastructure, corridor modelling for wildlife crossing design, and coupling high-resolution remote sensing with historical narratives for novel impact assessment. Key professional works range widely in scale, from new town planning to the winning entry for New York City’s 46,000-acre Gateway National Park. I offer studio and lecture courses on regional landscape planning, landscape media, and GIS and research-based seminars and studios on environmental conservation, modernization and rural development in Hong Kong, China, South and Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Laos), and Latin America. I have coordinated the thesis in landscape architecture at The University of Hong Kong for five years.
Date posted: 08 August 2022
For Myanmar civil society engaged in conservation and sustainable development, it is often difficult to make connections between government-published information and current remote-sensing data on landscape change, if such data can easily be accessed at all. This post contains a new series of 125 maps for Tanintharyi Region at 1:50,000 scale matching the extent of the commonly used map series published in 2007 by the Myanmar Survey Department, Ministry of Agricult...
www.designforconservation.org/news/150000-maps-forest-loss-land-cover-tanintharyi
Date posted: 12 May 2022
HKU Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Studies BA(LS) students capped their senior year with the Final Review for Studio Laos: Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong. The studio focused on northern Laos's rapidly transforming landscapes along its border with southwest China. Co-taught by professors Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, this studio teaches students not merely how planners or architects or landscape architects might be involved in large-scale...
www.designforconservation.org/news/studio-laos-2022-final-review
Date posted: 01 June 2021
A new book, Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative by Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu, will be published by Springer Nature in November 2021. Backcover text: This open access book traces the development of landscapes along the 414-kilometer China–Laos Railway, one of the first infrastructure projects implemented under China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and which is due for completion at the end of 2021. Written from the perspectiv...
www.designforconservation.org/news/critical-landscape-planning-released-november-2021
Date posted: 04 June 2020
Final-year HKU Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Studies BA(LS) students presented their strategic planning proposals for northern Laos to an international panel of ecologists, sociologists, geographers, activists, and philanthropists, in addition to designers and planners. For their proposals, students each asked difficult questions of development and sustainability practices, including: Challenging impact assessment scope; qualifying the remediation potential of Chi...
www.designforconservation.org/news/studio-laos-2020-final-review
Date posted: 15 February 2020
"Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong" builds on six years of design-based experiential learning across mainland Southeast Asia by the Division of Landscape Architecture. This year, focusing on the regional impacts of China's Belt and Road Initiative in northern Laos, students spend one term engaging issues of development vis-à-vis landscape architecture to define problems and produce innovative planning proposals. During this process, students dev...
Date posted: 24 August 2019
Thailand and Dawei Special Economic Zone: Road Link to Kilometer Zero Date: 24 August 2019, Time: 13:30, Venue: Multi-function Room, 1st floor, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. Agenda: Ashley Scott Kelly, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong Counter-assessment of impacts and history for the Dawei road link, 1995-2019. Saw Frankie Abreu, Tenasserim River & Indigenous People Network (TRIP NET) and representatives from impacted communities Voices fro...
www.designforconservation.org/news/public-forum-on-transborder-dawei-road-link
Date posted: 16 July 2019
WWF releases new report, Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road, which places imminent threats to the ecological connectivity of Dawna-Tenasserim Landscape within a longer two-decade struggle between infrastructure and sustainability. Dawei road project poses risks to threatened species: WWF (Myanmar Times) Download report: Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road This report is the f...
www.designforconservation.org/news/wwf-releases-nature-peril-report
Date posted: 22 January 2019
"Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong" builds on five years of design-based experiential learning across mainland Southeast Asia by the Division of Landscape Architecture. This year, focusing on the regional impacts of China's Belt and Road Initiative in northern Laos, students spend one term engaging issues of development vis-à-vis landscape architecture to define problems and produce innovative planning proposals. During this process, students de...
Date posted: 10 December 2018
Master of Landscape Architecture students presented their projects for Environmental Futures Studio: Design, nature and the erosion of conservation in Hong Kong. Jury members included representatives from Hong Kong's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Greenpeace, HKU ecologists and land development experts, and local civil society, including Designing Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Wetland Conservation Association. Durin...
www.designforconservation.org/news/environmental-futures-studio-hong-kong
