Project type: Professional, International Consulting Project

Location: Guangzhou, China

Year: 2022

Scale: 803 square km

My role: Responsible for marine-oriented city topics and feature area urban design

An essay was inspired by this project and published later. Spatial Characteristics of Central Activity Zones in Maritime Cities: Research and Design Practice

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/22.73882/113.57615

Nansha occupies the majority of Guangzhou’s coastal and marine resources and plays a strategic role in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area. Despite its extensive waterfront, islands, and maritime infrastructure, urban development and public life have remained predominantly land-oriented, with limited integration between the city and the sea.

Existing marine spaces were largely dominated by port, industrial, and logistical uses, resulting in fragmented coastlines, weak land–sea interaction, and underutilized public waterfronts. The challenge was not a lack of marine resources, but the absence of a spatial framework capable of translating maritime assets into cultural, social, and urban value at multiple scales.

sea landscape of Nansha

As the project lead for the “Maritime Nansha” thematic study, I developed a marine-oriented spatial strategy that reframed the sea not only as infrastructure or territory, but as an urban place. Drawing on maritime spatial planning and international waterfront precedents, the work proposed a typological system of “blue spaces” and a multi-scale strategy to reorganize coastal functions, enhance public access, and strengthen land–sea interaction across the district.

The study provided a conceptual and spatial foundation for integrating marine space into Nansha’s urban structure, supporting its transition toward a marine-oriented city within the Greater Bay Area. It demonstrates how planning can operate across land and sea to address institutional, spatial, and cultural fragmentation under complex governance and development conditions.