Shanghai's Houtan Park turns polluted land into a natural water purifier

In 2010, Shanghai transformed a polluted industrial brownfield into Houtan Park. Its wetlands now clean up to 634,000 gallons of river water each day. The 14-hectare linear park stretches along the Huangpu River and was once home to a steel factory, a shipyard, and a heavy industrial storage facility. For decades, the site was used as a dumping ground for industrial waste and leftover materials. Security walls separated it from the surrounding city, while polluted runoff flowed through the area.A detailed post-occupancy performance study by the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF), part of its Landscape Performance Series, shows how the design team, led by landscape architect Dr. Kongjian Yu and his firm Turenscape, completely reshaped the site. Instead of using energy-intensive chemical treatment plants or traditional concrete pipes, the team created a living biological filter.