This book introduces a ten-year long design research project in the context of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), China, based on international cooperation studios, design workshops, a Ph.D. thesis and concrete practice in China, Germany and the Netherlands. This research adapts the existing methods of Landscape Character Assessment (UK), Historic Cultural Landscape Elements (Germany), and Dutch polder classification to mapping, describing and classifying landscape character areas and types at the three scales of regional, municipal and local. Furthermore, we tested this typological approach in design research projects, such as for one specific polder type, three transects within Taihu Basin and for the north river bank of the Yangtze River. This research bridges the gap of a missing landscape characterization method for the conservation, transformation and critical reconstruction of historic cultural landscapes in a metropolitan or regional context. The book is intended for graduate students, researchers and practitioners who are interested in the topics of cultural landscape in transition, methods for landscape characterization and typology and a research-by-design approach in interdisciplinary projects of landscape architecture, urbanism and regional planning.