Landscape Empowerment

This book discusses essential strategies and approaches to creating mentally restorative environments for highly stressed and depressed workers at sweatshop factories. Drawing on the Foxconn factory in Longhua, China and an adjacent urban village as a sample site for research and design practice, the book employs a bottom-up and participatory process. The content is divided into two main parts, the first of which investigates economic, cultural, human rights, and environmental issues related to the electronic industry and urban village, providing in-depth research on various aspects, especially the working and living conditions for Foxconn workers. Based on these findings, the second part highlights potential landscape designs to address a range of issues, locations, and scales. The books goals are to provide a set of original methods for research and design practice in a complex social and economic context, and to raise awareness regarding the health, dignity and freedom of millions of workers.

Bin Jiang, PhD of University of Illinois (USA); Co-Chair, Research and Methods Track, Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (USA); Founding Director, Virtual Reality Lab of Urban Environments and Human Health; Assistant Professor, PhD Advisor, Division of Landscape Architecture, Department of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong.