Time Asia reports Kongjian believes China?EUR??,,????'???s dramatic urban development, said to be the largest in human history, is not only dull but ecologically reckless. With farmlands and forests disappearing, Kongjian expresses the need for China to develop a new relationship between the land and people. While China has a long tradition of private gardens, recent park building has been described as austere and even Stalinesque.

In 2003, Kongjian founded China’s first graduate program in landscape architecture at Peking University, where he serves as dean and writes against ?EUR??,,????'??monumentalism?EUR??,,????'?? design, i.e., massive plazas and features best appreciated from a bird?EUR??,,????'???s-eye view.

Kongjian?EUR??,,????'???s designs are more about maintaining some aspects of the land, such as his campus design in Shenyang that incorporated rice paddies of the farms it displaced.