Landscape-Based Urbanism

Abstract

Sustainable urbanisation requires planning and design strategies and principles that take the (natural) landscape as the basis for working with natural processes for the benefit of socially and ecologically inclusive and thriving urban landscapes. Such an approach takes the landscape first and considers the biosphere the context for social and economic development. In this chapter, the concept of landscape-based urbanism is introduced, taking the physical landscape structure, and associated natural processes as a foundation to generate favourable conditions for future development and to guide and shape spatial transformation. Therefore, this approach offers a multiscale and integrative model for urban development and transformation, the preservation of biodiversity, water resource management, improved leisure facilities, community building, stronger cultural identity and economic development while taking the landscape as the basis. Landscape-based urbanism identifies and guides urban development towards the most advantageous places, functions, scales and inter-relationships through the development of robust landscape structures. Design explorations utilise knowledge of the natural and social context and are used as a systematic search for possible solutions to a spatial problem. At the same time, the design explorations make clear which landscape structures and elements, for example from an ecological or cultural-historical point of view, should be preserved.