Strategy and Practice for Approx-natural Restoration Planning of Urban River Network Spaces in the Context of Territorial Spatial Planning: A Case Study of Taicang City, Jiangsu Province

As a typical blue-green coupling space, urban river network spaces mostly face three major problems: Imbalance in the structure of blue-green space, lack of interaction with urban hinterland and inefficiency of manual interventions. In the context of territorial spatial planning, it is urgent for ecological restoration of urban river network space to make sure how to build a multi-objective integrated blue-green ecological space, efficiently restore the degraded and damaged urban river network spaces, and actively respond to economic, social and environmental spatial demands. Inspired by the concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS), this research takes Taicang City in Jiangsu Province as the research object and, based on the pressure-state-response (PSR) model, carries out the approx-natural overall ecological index evaluation at the scale of river segment, develops an evaluation model from the two aspects of natural environment and social development, and builds a planning framework for approx-natural restoration of urban river network spaces. At the macroscopic scale, the research coordinates the construction of an overall ecological pattern of “three horizontal and three vertical ecological corridors and multipoint habitat patches” following the principle of “blue-green coupling”; at the mesoscopic scale, the research proposes the guidance strategies for the spatial development of five types of river segments following the principle of “nourishing green spaces with blue spaces”; at the microscopic scale, the research guides the approx-natural restoration of key land plots following the principle of “healing blue spaces with green spaces”. The research finds that the approx-natural restoration of urban river network spaces is an effective technical approach to realize the coupling and multi-value synergy of blue and green elements, which can help improve the globality of governance concept, the integration of governance content, the coupling of governance methods and the effectiveness of governance strategies with respect to river network spaces.