Technological lineages and critical heritage implications of modern landscape architecture in Changchun, 1906–1945

Modern Chinese landscape architectural history has largely emphasized humanistic and tradition-oriented narratives, leaving engineering-driven trajectories underexplored. This study examines one such trajectory in Changchun, between 1906 and 1945. Using a qualitative historical-documentary approach, it combines multilingual archival materials, historical maps, planning documents, scholarship, and comparative planning history to investigate how this technological lineage formed, how global planning ideas were translated into local practice, and how its heritage implications should be assessed. The study argues that Changchun's landscape system emerged through a dual-force mechanism combining colonial institutional mobilization with the environmental constraints of Northeast China's cold-region conditions. Under these conditions, landscape practice shifted from isolated park design to an integrated landscape-infrastructural system incorporating topography-based low-intervention design, stormwater management, waterway–park networks, parkways, greenbelts, and cold-climate planting techniques. These practices represented an instrumental translation of Garden City, City Beautiful, Parkway, and sanitary engineering concepts into a colonial spatial project. Although technically sophisticated, the system also reinforced hierarchy, segregation, and exclusionary governance. By distinguishing technical modernization from public modernity, the study contributes to modern Chinese landscape architectural history, comparative planning history, critical heritage studies, and debates on resilient urban infrastructure and climate adaptation.