LOCATION: Ningbo City of Zhejiang Province, China.

AREA: General Research: 2000 ha/Regional Plan:69.5 ha

1 Background: Ningbo-the model of Chinese conventional canal city
As the improvement of China's Grand Canal system, Ningbo has become the most critical transit city between inland navigation and maritime trade which has been 1200 years from now. It promoted the formation of the water network framework of "three rivers and six canals".
Canal network has gradually become an important system integrating urban-rural areas and the surrounding nature, whilst it has played a multiple of crucial roles in transportation, irrigation, water supply and drainage and so on. Canal network has become an indispensable part of Ningbo's historical city structure.

2. Challenges and Opportunities: The canals decline gradually, transforming from the city's life-support system to “lost space”.
Today, many traditional urban service functions (water supply, shipping, irrigation, etc.) were gradually weakened. Rapid urbanization has increased the risk of water pollution and urban flooding. As a large amount of industrial land has been concentrated in the surrounding area, the water environment got significantly worse and gradually lost the public vitality. Canals as important linear infrastructure of the city, have the potential ability to reintegration the surrounding fragmented space, forming the green axis connecting suburbs to the city center, and endow the modern urban space with regional culture characteristics.

3. Objectives and Strategies: Canal network as the medium of the resilient regeneration of Ningbo City
In the new century, Ningbo set out for the exploration of a redevelopment to achieve the integration of nature. As the most crucial network structure of urban infrastructure, canal network sees great potential of regeneration and becomes the key of building Ningbo into a resilient city.
On the rigid engineering structure of the canal, the plan focuses on the restoration of its resilient capacity and reconstruction of the natural ecosystem. At the macro (integrated system regeneration strategy)、meso-level (the specific land integration and functional restoration model) and micro level (creative design as intervention and implementation technology), the planning adopted eight main strategies, including space penitential exploration, slow-traffic connection, stepped implementation, and natural connection, etc., to restore the spatial resilience, ecological resilience, and social resilience of the canal network. Also, further efforts will be made to achieve a series of goals such as plant restoration, rain water management, water quality improvement, habitat restoration, waterfront activation, community rejuvenation and so on, thus enhancing the sustainability and adaptability of Ningbo City.

4 Main contents: Reconstruction of multifunctional and composite resilient canal system in the urban built area
1) Spatial resilience
The key point of the canal revival is to fully tap the potential of the space around these canals and promote the transition of the urban land use model.
The canal network can become a structural skeleton, with the integration of the identified various types of surrounding spaces, including public green space, shelter land, occupied space, unused vacant land, industrial land awaiting transformation, agricultural land, and villages. Through innovative and systematic planning and design, the whole network can be transformed from gray infrastructure of a single function to multi-functional green infrastructure.
Then, a continuous slow traffic system along the canal has been constructed to establish an efficient and convenient connection with the surrounding urban areas to meet the needs of all residents being close to the waterfront.
The plan emphasis on linking up with the relevant management departments (including land and resource, urban planning, transportation, water conservancy, neighborhood committee, etc.). At the level of implementation, the stepped planning scheme is puts forward, which follows the principle of handling the easy issues first and the tough follows, opening the key nodes first and then expanding gradually, driving the urban renewal in stages, and considering the win-win situation of multiple interests. In turn, land and extensive financial support will be accessible.
2) Ecological resilience
With the integrated canal-side space, the planning attaches attention to adopt scientific, moderate ecological technology and systematic ecological restoration strategy, forming a structure of a coherent canal ecological corridor with a series of key ecological node. Integrated ecosystem service function of the canal natural system (resilient flood control, natural purification, restoration of habitats for animals and plants) is built to create a new functional canal-side ecosystem.
To begin with, a multiple of engineering measures are adopted, involving centralized treatment of municipal sewage, supplement of reused water and dredging of polluted sediment, and furtherly a series of ecological enhancement design methods are taken.
The focus of constructing the canal ecological corridor is to restore the "soft boundary" of the river bank—a dynamic ecosystem interface between the water and the city based on the traditional canal wall, the priority of the plan should be given to the restoration capacity of biodiversity and rain water quality improvement. Three main forms are adopted: on the inner side of the embankment, planting slot is added to restore the habitat; expand the embankment to build laddering plant belt, enhancing the water permeability and water purification ability; In areas where extra space is available, near-natural recovery methods are employed. In the limited corridor space of the canal, these measures are adopted to restore the land and water interface, strengthen the function of water source filtering and purifying, rebuild the precious canal-side ecosystem, and provide possibilities for public use.
A series of key ecological nodes form essential buffer zone for the whole canal ecosystem. The design of the key ecological nodes consciously expands the hydro-fluctuation zone, which makes it become the storage pool for urban rainwater, thus enhances the adaptability of urban climate change. It also becomes a key area for the restoration of diverse and healthy ecological habitat for animals and plant communities in urban built-up areas. Apart from the hydro-fluctuation zone, the realization of waterfront win-win benefits for both public use and ecology is mainly considered, that is to say, in the meantime of creating large valuable natural areas in urban built area, the plan also tries to provide a variety of public recreational experience for urban residents.
3) Social resilience
Traditional water network cities in China normally form double network structure where roads parallel to canals, so that usually the urban land can adjacent both to streets and canals. In modern cities, with the continuous improvement of the canal environmental quality, the public attraction will continue to strengthen and become the backyard of urban public life again.
Canal network will become an important buffer zone of public life in the high-density Ningbo city. The canal network, spreading from the center of the city to the suburbs, can reintroduce the precious natural rural environment into the city. The plan intends to link multiple types of spaces (urban green space, plazas, postindustrial areas, lakes, farmland, villages, etc.), providing the possibilities of offering various modern public lifestyle, and realizing the win-win situation of community service, sightseeing and tourism, ecological service, industrial transformation and economic benefits. Meanwhile, the plan is integrated with a series of public events, making efforts to lead the folk customs of Ningbo into the canal revival.
With the constant enhancement of the continuity and accessibility, the surrounding land of the canal network will regain its high-value. In this sense, the plan is expected to become a significant driving force to promote the urban transformation and development.

5.Conclusion
Ningbo canal network reconstruction is consistent with the redevelopment goal of Ningbo City. Relying on the canal network, the "neglected" urban spaces are reused to reconstruct a new resilient network with beautiful environment, comprehensive ecosystem services and public vitality. This network will become the carrier relinking Ningbo City with the nature, realizing the introverted urban renewal and sustainable development.
Since 2017, the construction project of the canals has been launched step by step.