Urban development and disaster risk are deeply linked, especially now when we are facing increasingly frequent climate change. Hence, knowledge of the potential trade-offs between urban development and disaster risk reduction (DRR) may have potential to build a resilient and sustainable future. The objectives of this study are (1) to present education for a sustainability (EfS) program and to evaluate its performance: a serious game of knowledge communication for the interactions among climate change, disaster risk, and urban development; (2) to explore factors that will influence the players’ decision making in the trade-offs between urban development and DRR under an urbanization background through counterfactual scenarios constructed by a series of serious games. The Yudai Trench, once a critical component of the urban green infrastructure of ancient Guangzhou, has disappeared under rapid urban expansion, leaving the city exposed to environmental hazards caused by climate change. Is the disappearance of the Yudai Trench an inevitable event in the progress of urbanization? To answer this question, the study constructed counterfactual scenarios by recuring the historical progress through the same serious game. Gameplay involved the players’ decision making with associated impacts on the urbanization progress and the DRR in diverse climate hazard scenarios. For this study, 107 undergraduates from related majors, who are also would-be policymakers, were selected as players. The methodology combined questionnaire survey and participant observation complemented by interviews. The t-test results indicated that undergraduates’ knowledge levels had significant positive changes after the end of the serious game. Importantly, the results showed that the knowledge could potentially contribute to the players’ decision-making process for DRR by assisting them in making pre-decision. Beside this knowledge, the results expanded the range of influencing factors and solutions reported by previous literature on DRR under an urbanization background against climate hazards by constructing counterfactual scenarios, e.g., higher economic levels and policy incentives. In this study, the serious game was evaluated as an innovative communication and the EfS method in counterfactual scenarios. These findings of the study provide a reference for future practice, policymaking, and decision making so as to help harness lessons learned from unrealized environmental hazards to support a more resilient future through informed policies and plans.

Ignoring the function of natural landscapes in the rapid development of urbanization, and especially in the conservation of historic urban landscapes, is still obvious today, and this has caused a large decrease in natural space, loss of habitats, and an increase in disasters. The resilience of a whole city and parts of it, such as historic urban areas where the historical process of man and nature have been recorded, as well as the interaction between nature, economy, and culture, is not strong enough to maintain the stability of urban ecosystems. It is misleading to think that the resilience can be built in a historic urban area without a natural landscape. We question whether this is true. Using a semantic differential analysis method from a historical perspective, this paper aims to answer this question through research on the correlation between resilience and man and nature through a case study of Yudai Trench historic urban landscape in Guangzhou, a historic urban area with 1000 years of history. A total of 212 pieces of evidence were extracted from 59 historical sources. The results showed that the cultural and economic conditions were in the same step and cycles as nature, which were influenced strongly by climate change, and that the natural landscape has a correlation on and is a dominant force in the resilience of historic urban landscapes.

Tactical Urbanism is a growing movement across the world in which individuals, communities, and municipalities are improving their cities by using short-term, lowcost, and small-scale interventions and policies to catalyze long term change. The aim of this paper is to test the principle sand the approach of tactical urbanism to solve Guangzhou’slocalpublicspacesproblemsbyshowcasingtwotacticalurbanismprojects which have been completed in the Guangzhou urban context. These two cases reveal the opportunities that bottom-up approaches like tactical urbanism can build a bridge to conjunct with long term planning efforts and complete the top-down mechanisms. IntheZhusigangcommunitycase,we examine the spontaneous unplanned practices in the local community,which resemble“Tacticalurbanism” principles,and their spatial appropriation and utilization of marginalized community spaces. We assess how and where daily activities are happening and what other amenities could be provide by temporarily introducing these activities into a local gallery space. In the former textile factory case, we present examples that make the case for temporary, flexible and experimental responses to urban vacant land, then conclude by outlining the potential benefits and drawbacks of this temporary use model. This paper explores the existing practices of appropriation and the potential of temporary occupation in the city and concludes with thoughts on how tactical urbanism, an international movement, might gain a foothold in the context of local Chinese communities