Between Land and Water (Narratives of Water-Based Rurban Landscape)

Between Land and Water reveals topologies within the changing rurban landscape of the Yongning river plain in China. It explores the interwoven relationships between the cultural meanings of places associated with water, the ecological conditions of a water-based landscape, techno-natural water infrastructures, everyday water practices, and rapid urbanization processes in a formerly rural landscape. The authors carefully weave together cartographic narratives about land use and industrialization, water scarcity, housing resettlements, and state administrative redistricting practices. This careful re-reading of the landscape raises questions about the sustainable water-based future development of the rurban landscape of the Yongning river plain. Visually narrative yet analytic in focus, the volume draws on historical cartographic records and extensive empirical field data to trace the dynamic interplay of technical visions, cultural heritage, ecological conditions, and migration in the creation of a water-based rurban landscape.

• Reveals the intrinsic logic of a rurban landscape balanced between land and water
• Extensive empirical field data and historical cartographic records of the Yongning river plain
• Part of the “Urban-Rural Assembly” research project, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research