Decentralising Australian cities via high speed rail

I lived in China for over 10 years and saw the transformation of cities through the building high-speed rail connections. The first weekend of my time in China in 2005,  I took a K-Train to Suzhou(about 100kms from Shanghai) to see the gardens, and it took about 55-60 minutes on the train and we passed through […]

Why are countries creating their own cryptocurrencies?

Over the last few months, we have seen countries creating or preparing to make cryptocurrencies including China, Ecuador, Senegal, Estonia, Russia. The reason that countries are looking at cryptocurrencies(Cryptocurrency) is they see it as a way to efficiently and cheaply move forward in many areas including digital payments – if you have been in Asia […]

What’s in a name? Companies that use country of origin to become ‘international’

There is a growing number of landscape firms in China, some are foreign, some local and many a mix (often referred to as sino-american or sino-australia, etc). The company names are interesting to read some a very simple and aimed at a certain market, others keep their name from abroad or just create a literal […]

Changing landscape uses in China

Use of landscape and recreation is changing in China. Over the last few years I have been in China landscape uses have changed from passive uses(people watching, reading, singing & card/table games) with a some active uses(dancing, exercises, badminton & kite flying) to more and more different uses. There has been a great increase in […]

Landscape architecture in China needs to become more professional

I have been working in China for over 6 years as a landscape architect and there are many differences in comparison to Australia and Canada where I have worked before including size of the project, speed of design and the materials used (some good some bad). But the biggest difference that strikes me about the […]