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 Chinese contract farming; bridging scientific study and community forestry; mitigating the industrialization and over-harvesting of species for traditional medicine; and exploring overlaps between mass ecotourism, protected areas and the illegal wildlife trade.
Having not visited Laos this term due to the pandemic, we took the opportunity to reinforce our critical approaches to planning, in which we understand our "sites" as inherently multi-sited constructs dominated by different stakeholders' perspectives. In place of their field trip, each student was assigned pairs of existing development projects that we visited in previous years, and they were instructed to imagine the frictions between those sites' ideologies, aims, expertise, and longer histories.
The students and their instructors, Lu and Ashley, thank our panelists for joining and recognizing the value of the studio's critical "landscape approach" and the importance of the students' proposals to Laos's future development. Panelists included:
Prof. Emily Yeh (Dept. of Geography, University of Colorado); Francois Guegan (Conservation Director, WWF Laos); Alice Hughes (Centre for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden); Andy Brown (Executive Director, Kadoorie Farm and Botanical Garden, Hong Kong); William Bleisch (Research Director, China Exploration and Research Society); Matthew Hunt (CEO, Free the Bears); Prof. David Palmer (HKU Dept. of Sociology); Winnie Law (HKU Centre for Civil Society and Governance); Enze Han (HKU Dept. of Politics and Public Administration); Danny Marks (CityU Dept. of Asian and International Studies); Joseba Estévez (HKU Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences); Inge Goudsmidt (Office for Metropolitan Architecture); Prof. Jeff Hou (Dept. of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington); and Elizabeth Leven, Cecilia Chu, Sony Devabhaktuni, and Merve Bedir from HKU Architecture and Landscape Architecture.
Congratulations to all for an incredible term!
Posted by: Ashley Scott Kelly (Design for Conservation)
