Welcome to the City of the Future. Where Everything Begins with a Park

The chapter discusses the multiple roles public parks have played in recent large-scale urban developments in East and South-East Asia. Conceived as multifunctional spaces and as the core of new urban transformations, public parks are assigned a prominent role as elements of urban distinctiveness, to enhance diversity of the urban fabric and fabricate site-specificity. At the same time, they are the ideal preferred means for implementing strategies for urban resilience and for raising environmental awareness: new urban parks are designed as the devices for adapting to urban climate change, the structures for supporting water resources management and stormwater treatment, the places to accommodate measures for the protection of urban biodiversity. Focusing on a variety of large parks built in New Towns, new cities, and new urban expansions over the last 15 years in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, the essay aims to highlight the strategies and approaches to the design of public parks in the contemporary high-density Asian city.