Urban living is filled with creativity and artificial wonder, which we associate ourselves with on a daily basis. As we are highly adaptive animals, we get used to the surroundings of urban living and tend to forget about the nature from which we come and need to thrive. In times like this, a park with sparkling fountains and century-old trees can be such an unexpected surprise of natural wonder, that fills our heart and soul with the regenerative energy of life.
In times like this, I often wonder, why is it that our brain can, at all, adapt to a drastically artificial environment like many poorly planned cities? If every time we could be reawakened by the wonderful nature, reaffirmed the importance of our reliance on it, and reminded of our natural state as a human being, is there at all, meaningful reasons for us to keep living in and developing an environment the opposite of such?
Jieling Liu is pursuing her doctorate degree in Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. She is also Visiting Scholar at the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Institutional Analysis at Indiana University Bloomington between 2019-2020. Besides, Jieling is Lead Guest Editor for the journal Cities & Health special issue - Asian City Futures: Spatial form and health.
She has an academic background in Political Sciences and Journalism. Before joining the PhD Program, Jieling was a journalist and Managing Editor for Redstar Works, a UK-China publication agency where she was in charge of producing three bilingual magazines - REDSTAR, Qingdao Family & Shandong Education Guide. In this position, she often covered topics of contemporary cultural, educational, socio-economic and environmental affairs.
Jieling’s thesis examines the planning and governance of urban green spaces as common-pool resources for climate change adaptation and health under Ecological Civilisation, in the context of rapid socio-economic urban development in China, with specific case studies drawn from Guangzhou. She is supervised by Prof. Dr Franz Gatzweiler, an ecological economist and Executive Director of the global science program ‘Urban Health and Wellbeing: a Systems Approach’ hosted by the Institute of Urban Environment - Chinese Academy of Sciences, and co-supervised by Dr Olivia Bina, geographer and Principal Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.
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Ploughed Field 