SCENIC Jinji Lake in the heart of China's Suzhou Industrial Park is a waterfront hub that's popular with visitors to the Chinese city.

In the 1990s, it was largely farmland - and Sean Chiao, who was involved in drawing up the lake's masterplan then as an urban design consultant, practically waged an ideological battle to turn it into the hive of bustling activity that it is today.

The Chinese officials wanted to just "shrub it up", as he recalls in an interview one recent afternoon in Singapore. Mr Chiao had other plans. He told them that it had to go beyond just planting trees to injecting a wide array of activities into the area. This master-planning tug-of-war with the officials soon veered into philosophical, even ideological, territory.