State of the Waters

Within and beyond its sovereign boundaries, the state of its waters continues to be of utmost importance to the Chinese State. National policies and action plans have prioritised economic growth through formation of urban agglomerations and infrastructural development to support the same. Two of the three primary city-regions formed around river deltas have witnessed altered shorelines, erosion of mangroves, extensive reclamation of land, uncontrolled waterfront construction and, more recently, advancement in territorial strength over the oceanic region. While economic growth progress was secured through rapid urbanisation, the sustenance of ecological networks and habitat has been deemed highly insecure. As a result, in addition to natural storm surge and typhoons, the region must survive through extreme water quality degradation, shortage of fresh water supply, headwater and wetland erosion, subsidence and flooding. The perpetual urban transformation of the agrarian region to achieve a prosperous future has made it impossible to neglect the consequences of this ecological peril. How then does one translate a renewed systems-thinking into a scientific approach of urban design, to service the riverine Chinese landscape?

The aforementioned factors are evident in the case of Guangdong Province, located in the south of China. These are addressed through ambitious hydrological infrastructure undertakings, such as ‘Water Ten’ Plan to improve water quality, the Sponge City programme for storm water flood control and eco-compensation programmes. When examined in a historical overview of the region, it becomes increasingly clear that similar quests for territorial administration of land resources and people have been pursued via implementation of hydraulic infrastructure. The country has observed ‘agro-managerial’ and ‘agro-bureaucratic’ approaches as early as 1 BCE, through the Qin Dynasty in the Early Empire period. Since 809 BCE in the Guangdong Province, the Tang Dynasty witnessed waterworks of five types: dikes, reservoirs, weirs, canals and streams. These were engineered to set up agricultural activity and trade, as tanka boats transferred goods from the Guangzhou Bund port to inland villages monitored through a network of canal systems. Hydraulic construction has been the tool of control over navigation, irrigation and floods, in order to assume national or regional leadership in China.

Fast-forward to the present day. The Pearl River Delta (PRD) Region is developed to be one of the three largest Chinese urban agglomerations. It comprises of nine cities in the mainland area, in addition to the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. In contrast to the other two large river deltas (the Yellow River Delta and Yangtze River Delta), the PRD presents a unique narrative of emergence and support to thriving urban life and economic activity in the region. The process of formation, rapid ecological change and urbanisation that catalysed it raises the following questions: How have its fluvial processes been shaped by the developmental planning of urban and regional infrastructure? Will further urbanisation in the Pearl River Delta region foster a synergy between urban developments which are presently hinged onto economic drivers and hydrological factors?

The city-region narrative of transformation in the PRD region is of rapid change; a willingness to demonstrate a great appetite for risk-taking and sweeping top-down alterations. Understandably then, the economic reforms of the Open Door Policy of 1979 saw major growth in trade, manufacturing and industrial activity. Starting in the 1980s, the designation of special economic zones of Shenzhen and Zhuhai, was followed in the next four decades with developmental actions to boost economic productivity. This included setting up of township and village enterprises (TVE), regional infrastructure networks and large-scale engineering of river elements. The per capita GDP quadrupled between 1980 and 2016, significantly raising the standard of living at a breakneck speed. While this is true for the large number of immigrants in Guangdong Province, it certainly implied that some necks were broken. The human cost involved in the transformation of the Guangdong countryside resulted in emigration of almost 9 million original residents out of the province and displacement of countless inhabitants due to designated parcel development. The plan-led and policy-driven urbanisation of rural areas resulted in a fractured urban form and unequal distribution of the benefits from regional economic prosperity. Furthermore, this urban form emerged in disjunction with the types of land cover, subsurface fluvial processes and evolutionary flows of river channels. It is therefore worthwhile to ask why and when did regional thinking become a critical exercise in the discourse around the PRD region.

Will further urbanisation in the Pearl River Delta region foster a synergy between urban developments that are presently hinged onto economic drivers and hydrological factors?

Before the PRD region was urbanised, Guangzhou was historically a major hub for export-oriented global trade. The cadastration of the Guangdong countryside done multiple times in the first half of the 20th century revealed that while all physical developments were conventionally scaled and planned at the level of cities or neighbourhoods, there were nascent efforts to think at a regional scale. Since 1979, the rollout of the PRD Urban Systems Plan, as late as 1995, was first to argue for a sustainable and coordinated city-region development. It propelled a need to understand the relationship between the natural and built environment, vis-à-vis laws, policies, plans and guidelines. Subsequent plans aimed to assess the balance between rural and urban geographies, natural ecosystems and built developments, policies vis-à-vis socio-economic metrics. However, hierarchical discord within planning tasks along with reckless construction had resumed a process of treading water in rising sea levels, amidst other hydrological risks. Most critical to its future, the region has now come to face severe environmental and hydrological challenges. These include headwaters erosion, highly polluted quality of water, restricted flow of river tributaries, deltaic subsidence in its sedimentary environment and high percentage of salinity from the South China Sea.

Following this line of thought, the assessment of urban developmental strategies in relation with deltaic components – plain, front, estuary and shallow sea-shelf – would highlight the tipping point between safe harbour and calamity. Therefore, a historical and layered understanding of the ‘delta-city-region’ enables a conjunctive analysis of scale vis-à-vis the time. The layers include deltaic processes that operate in geological time, regional development that takes a few decades to gain economic momentum and urban development that necessitates yearly revisions.

Delta formation, waterworks and emergence of the river delta

The history of formation and emergence of the PRD revealed the inextricable connection between human interventions and the functioning of the deltaic landscape. The PRD is part of the Guangdong Province and Lingnan geographic region. The river systems in the geographic region – the East, the North and the West – merge into the Pearl River in central Guangdong before flowing into the South China Sea. During their natural course of flow, they conform to the topography of the region. The complex causal chain for ‘making’ of the delta started with the preference of the first immigrants to settle in the hills of northern Guangdong, fearful of diseases like malaria in the river valleys to the south. The immigrants removed forest cover to perform agricultural activity, which led to increased amount of silt, as a result of the deforestation.

The formation of the delta began with drainage of silt, deposited by floods, which settled in the lower reaches of the North, East and West river valleys. Furthermore, the estuarine bay of the Pearl River received the silt due to construction of flood-control dikes and a network of levee structures made during the Song Dynasty. The successive wave of commercialisation of the predominantly agricultural economy became the most critical factor of change in the deltaic environment. The rice paddies were converted to fishponds with mulberry tree embankment systems for sericulture and sugarcane, in order to supply silk and sugar to European markets.

Heavy engineering of delta landscape over the centuries caused loss of interconnections in the diversity of ecosystems. The subsequent industrialisation and manufacturing activity in the second half of the 20th century led to disruption of the river flow, topographical modulation and pollution of water with untreated industrial waste. Sand dredging in river tributaries reduced the volume of sand in the riverbed causing subsidence. The rise in sea level, besides large amounts of monetary losses, increased salinity in the estuarine area extending further into the river.

Any urban development in Guangdong Province necessitates a study of historical waterworks, prevalent ecologies, 20th century development of infrastructure networks and other built structures

Critical Concerns

How do you address environmental concerns for the delta region and correlate them with regional demands for energy sources, trade flows and infrastructure of housing and transportation? The overlay of concerns regarding the river delta and urbanised region bring forth the need for compact and consolidated development, appropriate widths of road infrastructure and intersections, extension of transit lines and mixed-use neighbourhoods. The density structure plan for new urbanised areas must actively intersect with the environmental networks in order to preserve local ecological processes as well as facilitate an inter-city economic and cultural exchange.

Though the scale of urbanisation demands region-scale measures for water resources planning, the solution cannot be limited to large-scale heavy engineering projects. The scalar effects of repairing the hydrology of the delta must be seen at the urban and local neighbourhood scale. Therefore, any urban development in Guangdong Province necessitates a study of historical waterworks, prevalent ecologies, 20th century development of infrastructure networks and other built structures in order to suggest the best-fit development type.

The recent infrastructural undertakings of the PRD region are steps to facilitate increased connectivity, development of tech-innovation clusters and addressing estuarine water risks of the Pearl River. The rapid pursuit for economic prosperity is ultimately dependent on slow nurturing of deltaic ecology in geological time. What then are the challenges towards adopting a scientific, as well as, culturally responsive approach towards regional planning of land and water resources? An approach that imbibes time-marks of the region’s environmental history, in its quest to compete in a global context of urbanised bay area regions.

Envisioning coordinated ‘delta-city-region’ development

The coastlines of the PRD have been modified for protection against coastal erosion by the building of artificial beaches and islands, reclamation for aquaculture and agriculture and the construction of harbours. A toolkit of urban design strategies and hydrological planning can allow for resilient management of land and water resources respectively. The subsidence due to heavy surface developments must be studied in conjunction with sea-level rise. This study must mandate reduced ground water extraction and fewer check dams on rivers to avoid stoppage of sediment flow. The potential for delta shoreline progradation must be explored in the shift of the deltaic front and the estuarine area to reduce sediments being washed out into the South China Sea. A detailed survey of the levee structure built through the centuries can help discern plugins and relatively smaller modifications to revive natural flow of river tributaries.

Can the alternatives to shoreline erosion by uprooting mangroves, designation of rigid land uses and fragmented development be found in a coexistence of maritime port operation and people-centred urban space? An easily accessible coast and an increase in the quality of river and canal water can create recreational opportunities. Redesign of the shipping network in the hinterland of the coast can connect urban cores with a continuous structure of river walks and greenways. The quays and riverbanks can magnetise attractive riverfront spaces to live by in an ecological zone. A compact and controlled urban form can address the small-scale spatial experience of large-scale infrastructural developments. Rethinking the process of ‘zone-based development’ suggests opportunities for innovative recreational public space. Provision of basic amenities through focus on neighbourhood design can therefore address multiple scales for an efficient and sustainable mode of development.

The rapid pursuit for economic prosperity is ultimately dependent on slow nurturing of deltaic ecology in geological time

What information can we draw from this urbanised delta region? The PRD holds scalar consequences with highly controlled vectors: geostrategic importance on a continental trade route as per the Belt and Road Initiative, knowledge and innovation-based economy to generate a city-region competence with Silicon Valley and an inter-city exchange with Hong Kong through cultural and financial exchange avenues. At all these scales and vectors of control, the river delta and the South China Sea hold the key to determining sustainability and resiliency of any developmental ambition. As serious environmental problems are increasingly prioritised, the emerging methods of urban and regional planning must prioritise how to tread in rising waters.

To recall a Chinese proverb, ‘A fly before one’s own eye is bigger than an elephant in the next field.’ That is to say, though the Chinese approach tolerates short-term losses for long-term pursuits, it cannot condone its past survivability through dependence on the potent offerings of the river delta landscape. Rather, the narrative of a coordinated deltaic and city-region development as presented in this essay strengthens the premise that peoples’ everyday lives with equitable access to safe utilities, basic amenities, living and working environment and, most importantly, their potential to cope with increasingly varied challenges, must be acknowledged to discuss the success of all outcomes.

ALL PHOTOS: CHETAN KULKARNI/UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE ATTRIBUTION-NODERIVATIVES 4.0 INTERNATIONAL