Environmental Futures Initiative
Mission
The Environmental Futures Initiative is a research, teaching, and consultancy platform focused on design methodologies and strategies for intervening in complex developing, transboundary and frontier regions. Our mission objectives are:
- To inform development processes where social and environmental legislation is infant, land security weak, and landscape degradation increasingly rapid; and
- To provide a roadmap and toolset to build institutional capacity for stakeholders at several levels.
As academics and design professionals with expertise in both how to build and how to convey environmental and social impacts, we recognize the value of applied research and help synthesize and coordinate multiple silos of expertise, including landscape ecology, geography, and advanced geoinformatics. The current pace of development necessitates alternative and innovative approaches to modelling these impacts and scoping environmental mitigation that allow for informed decision-making, especially in the absence of otherwise critical data, context, or information.
Our methods come from critical landscape planning approaches that do not default or regress to generalization but instead accentuate differences in sites and systems with a transcalar approach from construction details to specific site strategies, landscapes and transboundary planning. We participate in data-driven advocacy and campaigns requiring synthesis and communication of complex issues, providing not only technical solutions but also scenario-building and strategies tailored to specific sites and audiences.
Our design tools and accompanying visualizations, while a mechanism for capacity building, also strive to encourage dialogue and transparency across diverse stakeholder groups. These inform policy makers, developers, and communities alike of best practices, risks, and the critical value of landscape planning in environmental stewardship and design.
- Ashley Scott Kelly (link to biography)
Division of Landscape Architecture
The University of Hong Kong
Research and Design Studios
The "studio" as a university course is a unique and innovative component of education in architecture, landscape architecture and planning and constitutes the majority of students' learning at both undergraduate and master's levels. We offer annual advanced studio courses on regional landscape planning.
These studio courses are region-focused and site-specific, with students typically traveling together to the region for 7-10 days to ask questions, test hypotheses, and present their initial findings and ideas to relevant stakeholders, including communities, governments, international NGOs and domestic civil society. Upon returning to Hong Kong, students scope individual or team "projects" and ultimately propose and defend a spatial design strategy or set of scenarios in front of a panel of cross-disciplinary experts. These designs take many forms, including master plans, infrastructure design, and policy recommendations. Consider the studio course an intensive 3-month brainstorming exercise to uncover the most urgent environmental and development problems of complex landscapes and propose, not solutions, but potential ways forward.
The sites and landscapes we investigate are complex, and each studio proposes a diversity of project types. Our process benefits from the dialogue and synergies that arise from rigorous investigations and stategic propositions on cross-sectoral issues, such as transport infrastructure planning alongside resource extraction, mining remediation, afforestation and the promotion of international development standards. In practice, these issues are not isolated and to propose active, transformative interventions requires that knowledge be generated rapidly and comprehensively.
Studios are largely run on a flexible year-by-year basis, allowing for both multi-year commitments and short, rapid responses to global issues. It is within these courses that our approaches and methods are developed and refined. Although run from Hong Kong, studios require and often help foster the creation of networks between several levels of stakeholders. As such, we are constantly searching for and welcoming proposals and support from potential partner institutions, governments, and communities.
Studio, Lecture and Seminar Courses
- Engaging development through critical landscape planning
Supervisor: Ashley Scott Kelly. Masters Theses Section 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22. - Studio Laos: Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong
Instructors: Ashley Scott Kelly and Xiaoxuan Lu. Undergraduate 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22. - Environmental Futures Studio: Design, nature and the erosion of conservation in Hong Kong
Instructor: Ashley Scott Kelly. Postgraduate 2018-19. - Landscape Planning Studio: Design on the Road to Burma
Instructors: Ashley Scott Kelly, Dorothy Tang, and Ivan Valin. Undergraduate 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17. - Studio Nepal: Designing nature, standards, and discontinuities in the Himalayas
Instructor: Ashley Scott Kelly. Postgraduate 2016-17. - Landscape as Development; or, Landscape architecture's missed connections with sustainability
Instructor: Ashley Scott Kelly. Postgraduate 2020-21, 2021-22. - Design Analytics: Nature, regions and the erosion of conservation in Hong Kong
Instructor: Ashley Scott Kelly. Postgraduate 2017-18. - Design Analytics: Visualizing nature, regions and discontinuities
Instructor: Ashley Scott Kelly. Postgraduate 2013-14, 2014-15. - The South America Project: Protected areas in the Peruvian Amazon
Instructors: Ashley Scott Kelly and Adam Bobbette. Postgraduate 2012-13. - Scales of Environmentalism: Waterworks and environmental conservation in China
Instructor: Ashley Scott Kelly. Postgraduate 2011-12, 2013-14.
Strategic Landscape Planning for the Greater Mekong
- Kelly, A. S., & Lu, X. (2021). Critical Landscape Planning during the Belt and Road Initiative. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4067-4
- Kelly, A. S., & Lu, X. (2019). Landscape perspectives on cross-border expertise and knowledge flows. Talk delivered at Land Information Working Group: Special Economic Zone and infrastructure investments in Laos to a forum of NGOs and civil society organizations from several ASEAN countries, Vientiane, Laos.
- Kelly, A. S. (2018). Engaging infrastructure development through critical design practice: Campaigns in Southeast Asia. Talk delivered to Environmental, Geostrategic, and Economic Dimensions of the Silk Road Economic Belt, hosted by Duke-Kunshan University and Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and Center for International and Global Studies, China.
The Road to Dawei: Environmental governance and development advocacy in southern Myanmar
- Kelly, A. S. (2019, under review). Design Review: Counter-assessment of impacts for the Dawei Road Link, 1995-2018 (Report). World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Myanmar. 198 pp.
- Kelly, A. S. (2019). Counter-assessment of impacts and history for the Dawei road link, 1995-2019. Opening talk delivered at Thailand and Dawei Special Economic Zone: The Road Link to Kilometer Zero to a forum of academics, NGOs, civil society, community stakeholders, and public at Bangkok Art & Culture Centre (BACC). Bangkok, Thailand.
- Helsingen, H., Kelly, A. S., Connette, G., Paing Soe, Bhagabati, N., Pairojmahakij, R., & Jayasinghe, N. (2019). Nature in peril: The risk to forests and wildlife from the Dawei-Htee Khee Road (Report). World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Myanmar. 51 pp.
- Kelly, A. S., Helsingen, H., & Tang, D. (2018). Engineering conservation: Stories and models of infrastructure, impact and uncertainty in southern Myanmar. In Arcus Foundation (Ed.), State of the Apes: Infrastructure and Ape Conservation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Kelly, A. S. (2017). Infrastructure, Impact and Uncertainty: Scenario-based approaches to upstream design, wildlife connectivity and sustainable construction in transport planning for southern Myanmar. Presented at the Forum on Sustainable Infrastructure: Integrating Climate Resilience and Natural Capital into Transport Infrastructure Planning and Design, hosted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and Vietnam's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Hanoi, Vietnam.
- Kelly, A. S., Connette, G., Helsingen, H., & Paing Soe. (2016). Wildlife Crossing: Locating species' movement corridors in Tanintharyi (Report). Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Myanmar. 49 pp.
- Tang, D., & Kelly, A. S. (2016). Design Manual: Building a Sustainable Road to Dawei (Report). Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Myanmar. 76 pp.
- Kelly, A. S., Tang D., Helsingen H., & Baghabhati N. (2015). Modelling infrastructure scenarios in data-poor regions: Land change, mitigation strategies, and 3D-printed landscapes. Exhibited at Fuller Symposium 2015, Wired in the Wild: Can technology save the planet? National Geographic, Washington DC.
- Helsingen, H., Sai Nay Won Myint, Bhagabati, N., Dixon, A., Olwero, N., Kelly, A. S., & Tang, D. (2015). A Better Road to Dawei: Protecting Wildlife, Sustaining Nature, Benefiting People (Report). Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Myanmar. 30 pp. In English, translated into Myanmar, Thai, and Karen.
The South America Project: Protected Areas in the Peruvian Amazon
- Kelly, A. S., & Pryor, M. R. (2013). Governing the road to China: Design, territory and data in the Peruvian Amazon. Landscape Architecture Frontiers, 1(6), 144-154.
- Kelly, A. S., & Pryor, M. R. (2013). Design for Conservation. Exhibited in South America Project: Works in Progress at the 14th International Buenos Aires Bienal of Architecture.
Hong Kong Land Development and Conservation
- Kelly, A. S. (2018). Sustainable Development and the Erosion of Conservation in Hong Kong. Talk delivered to CED Talk: Pacific Rim-Urban Resilience by Design. University of California Berkeley College of Environmental Design, Berkeley, California.
- Kelly, A. S. (2018). HKILA Land Supply Forum: Evaluating Land & Land Supply Strategies in Hong Kong. Hosted by the Hong Kong Institute of Landscape Architects, Hong Kong.
- Member of Urban Biodiversity Working Group. (2018). Sustainable Cities & Landscapes conference, Asia Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
- Kelly, A. S. (2017). Land Development and Conservation in Hong Kong: Questions we could be asking. Delivered opening remarks to 2017 Annual Land Forum: Land Challenges Amid New Administration. Hosted by The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Architecture, Designing Hong Kong, Land Watch, and the Professional Commons. Hong Kong.
- Kelly, A. S. (2016). Automated Monitoring of Potential Wildlife Trade Cases in the Hong Kong Judiciary (Online platform). Automated querying and notification system for detecting wildlife trade-related court cases in Hong Kong.
- Hosted and Co-organized Land Development and Conservation in Hong Kong – Roundtable and Workshop. (2016). University of Hong Kong. Co-organized with Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Hong Kong, Designing Hong Kong, Liber Research Community, Professional Commons, Land Watch, and Save Our Country Parks.
Development and Conservation Awareness Map (DCAM)
- Kelly, A. S. (2016). Development and Conservation Awareness Map (DCAM). Online interactive map: http://www.designforconservation.org/news/announcing-dcam-pilot-tanintharyi-myanmar.
Counterpart Cities: Climate Change and Collaborative Action in Hong Kong and Shenzhen
- Riley, T., Solomon, J., Tang, D., Kelly, A. S., Al, S., Feng, G., … Zhang, Q. C. (2011). Counterpart Cities: Climate Change and Collaborative Action in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Exhibited in Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture and Hong Kong Central Market Gallery.