Doctoral Dissertation Research: Land Reclamation, Urbanization, and Infrastructural Development

沿海城市越来越依赖填海造地来应对日益加剧的城市化压力。虽然人类住区从水体中开垦土地以为人类活动创造更适宜居住的区域的历史悠久，但开垦已不再局限于为促进工业和农业而小规模地排干沼泽或填满湖泊和河流。随着越来越多的城市填海造地以解决土地短缺的问题，人类与自然和建筑环境的关系是如何被重塑和协商的？除了为训练一名人类学研究生学习经验、科学数据收集和分析方法提供经费外，该项目还将向各组织广泛传播其研究结果，以增进对自然景观和社会关系如何改变的了解，从而增进对科学的了解。该项目将为那些制定政策和城市规划战略的人提供至关重要的数据，这些政策和城市规划战略可以处理与填海有关的环境和社会成本。该研究将在一个城市进行，该城市已经开垦了大部分现有土地面积，并计划通过各种技术方法继续积累更多的土地空间。这座城市愿意采用最新技术来促进其改造活动，这也为了解当代填海工程的复杂性和规模提供了一个窗口。这名研究人员将研究生态学家，他们的任务是恢复在开垦后被大量砍伐的红树林，以研究景观是如何创造、管理和在某些情况下恢复的。此外，该研究将调查居民的主观性，以确定某些社会群体是否比其他社会群体受益更多或遭受更大的损失。研究人员将通过参与观察、半结构化访谈、口述历史和档案实地调查来收集相关数据。这项研究的结果将为政策制定者和城市规划者提供见解，拓宽填海的技术重点，包括社会、文化和环境方面。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响评估标准进行了评估，认为值得支持。

Land reclamation is increasingly being relied upon by coastal cities responding to the pressures of intensified urbanization. While there is a long history of human settlements reclaiming land from water bodies to generate more habitable area for human activity, reclamation is no longer limited to smaller scale draining of swamps or the infilling of lakes and rivers to facilitate industry and agriculture. As more cities are reclaiming land from the sea in an effort to solve the problem of land scarcity, how is the relationship between human beings and the natural and built environment being reshaped and negotiated? In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, the project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to organizations with the aim of improving understanding how reclamation has altered physical landscapes and social relations. The project will produce data critical for those developing policies and urban planning strategies that can address the environmental and social costs associated with reclamation. The research will be conducted in a municipality that has reclaimed substantial portions of its current land area and plans to continue accruing more land space through a variety of technological methods. The city's willingness to engage in the latest technology to facilitate its terraforming activities also provides a window into understanding the sophistication and the scale of contemporary reclamation projects. The researcher will study ecologists who have been tasked with the undertaking of restoring mangroves that were decimated in the wake of reclamation to examine how landscapes are created, managed, and in some cases, restored. Furthermore, the study will inquire into the subjectivities of residents to determine whether certain social groups have benefited more or incurred more losses from reclamation over others. The researcher will conduct participant observation, semi-structured interviews, oral histories, and archival fieldwork to collect relevant data. Findings from this research will provide insight for policy makers and urban planners by broadening the technological focus of reclamation to include the social, cultural, and environmental dimensionsThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.