Region: Integration of Lakes and Cities—The Landscape Evolution of the Three Major Lakes in the Lower Reaches of the Qiantang River and Urban Development

This chapter examines the three major lakes in the lower reaches of the Qiantang River Jianhu, West Lake, and Xianghu and analyzes their landscape evolution in relation to the urban development of Shaoxing, Hangzhou, and Xiaoshan. By comparing their shared motivations for lake construction, modes of hydraulic intervention, lake–city scale relationships, and divergent trajectories of management and transformation, the chapter demonstrates how sustained historical interventions in hydrological systems reshaped the regional landscape system and, in turn, structured urban form and regional organization. The differing outcomes of the three lakes reveal that moderate and continuous human intervention was central to maintaining lake–city coexistence, highlighting the role of the regional landscape system as a mediating framework integrating ecological, natural, and cultural processes in traditional Chinese urban development.