The low-lying, arid coastal regions of the Southern Mediterranean Basin, extending over 4,600 km, face daunting sea level rise and hydroclimatic changes due to shifting weather patterns. The impact of these factors on coastal urban buildings and infrastructure must be better understood. Alexandria, a historic and densely populated port city in Egypt representative of several coastal towns in the Southern Mediterranean, has experienced over 280 building collapses along its shorelines over the past two decades, and the root causes are still under investigation. We examine the decadal changes in coastal and hydroclimatic drivers along the city's coastline using photogrammetric satellite images from 1974 to 2021. We explore the interconnectivity between shoreline retreat, ground subsidence, and building collapses. Our results suggest that collapses are correlated with severe coastal erosion driven by sediment imbalances resulting from decades of inefficient landscape management and urban expansion along the city's waterfront. This severe erosion, combined with sea level rise, increases seawater intrusion, raising groundwater levels in coastal aquifers. Degrading ground stability and accelerating corrosion in building foundations ultimately culminating in collapses. We identified a coastal area of high vulnerability with over 7,000 buildings at risk, surpassing any other vulnerable zone in the Mediterranean Basin. We propose cost-effective and nature-based techniques for coastal landscape adaptation to alleviate these dangers in Alexandria and other Southern Mediterranean cities facing similar climatic challenges.

This article examines the planning history of Siraf, an ancient port city on the Persian Gulf in Iran, through the lens of water heritage landscape. It argues that Siraf's water infrastructure was not a product of incremental, vernacular adaptation to aridity, but the result of deliberate urban planning rooted in Sassanid imperial policy, religious cosmology, and environmental knowledge. Drawing on archaeological evidence, historical texts, and spatial analysis, it explores how water collection, storage, and distribution systems were integrated into the urban fabric and aligned with settlement growth. The paper reframes five functionally zoned components of Siraf's water landscape as products of early planning rather than passive responses. It also engages with competing historical interpretations and recent revaluations of this infrastructure as heritage. By foregrounding the role of planning in enabling urban life in a water-scarce environment, this study contributes to planning history discourse and offers insights for contemporary planners grappling with sustainability and heritage in dryland cities. Siraf's case exemplifies how ancient urban resilience emerged from engineering ingenuity and coordinated spatial and infrastructural foresight.

The development of information technologies and the advent of extensive digital data since the 21st century have enabled more profound explorations and interpretations of the relationship between humans and the urban environment. This study systematically reviews the application of emerging data-driven methods in measuring human-environment interaction in urban spaces. The synthesis of 242 studies reveals a diversified application landscape of data-driven methods, employing street view imagery data, social media data, positioning data, physiological data, and video data, each carrying distinct information and addressing various research inquiries. We also review the new insights generated by their application, which offered evidence for analyzing and evaluating a wide range of established frameworks and classic theories concerning human perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects in urban spaces. Based on these findings, we describe the trends, advancements, and limitations of this rising research field, and make recommendations for future researchers adopting data-driven methods to understand relationships between humans and environments in urban spaces.

Urban heritage landscapes, with their layered cultural and aesthetic values, require precise visual analysis to support conservation and planning. However, existing visual analysis methods are often fragmented and fail to fully capture their complex visual-spatial characteristics. To address this gap, this paper proposes a combined visual analysis framework that integrates four GIS-based visual analysis methods—cumulative viewshed (CV), visual magnitude (VM), field of view (FOV) analysis, and street-view image (SVI) segmentation. These methods were applied to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of West Lake in Hangzhou, China, to explore lake–city–landscape relationships, classify lakeside landscape types, and interpret the spatial composition of iconic viewpoints. Findings indicate that: (a) four zones with both high CV and VM values coincide with key architectural and scenic landmarks, suggesting intentional spatial design strategies, while half of the “Ten Scenic Places” are influenced by symbolic or experiential factors beyond visibility; (b) 37 landscape types were identified along lakeside roads, revealing areas where vegetation obscures potential lake views and where design trade-offs are evident; (c) only two of ten potential city-to-lake visual corridors remain unobstructed, pointing to unmanaged vegetation as a critical barrier; and (d) these insights inform targeted visual management strategies, including vegetation control, viewpoint activation, and circulation optimization. This study highlights the limitations of single-method approaches, such as SVI's insensitivity to topographic variation, and suggests that a multi-perspective integration of VAMs can yield deeper spatial insights and more actionable guidance for managing urban heritage landscapes.

Rapid urbanization and climate change are the driving forces behind changing the urban landscape and affecting natural resources and the environment, particularly in the megacities of arid regions. Many of these cities face an acute water crisis leading to over-exploitation of groundwater resources. This over-exploitation has led to the depletion of aquifers, land infertility, saline intrusion, land subsidence, and harm to hydrological ecosystems. Globally, numerous studies have documented the potential of groundwater recharge (GWR) using GIS and remote sensing techniques. However, its practical application in a landscape context for sustainable urban and regional development is underexplored. In this study, we developed the landscape-based GWR concept by conducting a case study of Karachi city (Pakistan). We took physical landscape (surface and sub-surface) features and groundwater recharge potential as a base for design and planning to improve groundwater recharge and urban landscape. Moreover, we highlighted the added values of this approach besides recharging the depleted ground hydrological conditions and improving the urban landscape condition (i.e., social–ecological inclusiveness, sustainable future development, and interdisciplinary collaboration). The results indicated a negative impact of urbanization on groundwater recharge, especially in the alluvial zones and river valleys, underscoring the need for a spatial approach to safeguard GWR and guide development. Through this study, we propose that landscape-based GWR can be one of the potential solutions not only for the critical water crisis faced by rapidly urbanizing arid megacities but also for improving the overall quality of life and urban landscape. Furthermore, this holistic approach toward groundwater recharge can guide future urban development patterns, preservation of high groundwater recharge potential sites, and evolution toward sustainable development in arid regions where groundwater is the most significant yet vulnerable resource.

Population growth and urbanization are straining the limited space in the built environment. The business districts take up a great portion of this built space. These districts face climate change hazards and spatial emptiness due to their profit-driven foundation. Sustainable ambitions and strategic locations offer the potential to rethink business districts and integrate them into the living environment. Understanding business districts as potential workscapes, more socio-ecological inclusive business districts, is a new perspective. This research formulates a method to define the spatial quality of business districts through literature review and spatial analysis. A spatial analysis of forty cases in the Netherlands presents a higher spatial quality on more diverse landscapes. This indicates that diversification of the business districts’ landscape from monotone to multitone is needed to enable workscape development. Landscape-driven urbanism is needed to generate this desired level of quality. The research highlights the strategic location of edge-city business districts, situated between urban and rural areas, showing the potential to strengthen the urban-rural relationship. Further research on and by design is needed to enable workscape development.

Global climate change and rapid urbanization have intensified flood risks worldwide, especially in cross-regional watersheds where jurisdictions often implement mitigation strategies independently. Although grey infrastructure is widely used to address these heightened risks, its fragmented application frequently shifts hazards to adjacent regions and causes adverse ecological impacts. In contrast, green infrastructure (GI), an interconnected network of natural and semi-natural areas, offers a promising nature-based solution, yet variability in terrain, soils, land use, and hydrological connectivity complicates the development of universal GI planning guidelines. Thus, this study addresses two critical questions: (1) How do changes in flood risk management performance (FRMP) in one region affect neighboring regions? (2) How can GI planning be tailored to watershed heterogeneity? Focusing on three contiguous regions in China's Yangtze River Delta Ecological Green Integration Demonstration Zone, we simulated flood processes using the SCS-MIKE11 hydrological-hydrodynamic model, optimized GI spatial configurations via Simulated Annealing, and applied the TOPSIS to select configurations that balance FRMP across all regions. Results show: (1) significant interregional FRMP correlations, with midstream negatively correlated with upstream (p <0.001) and downstream (p <0.001); (2) dispersed GI spatial configurations better accommodate watershed heterogeneity; (3) prioritizing FRMP at regional boundaries when configuring GI effectively mitigates watershed-wide flood risks; (4) distributive justice, integrated land and water management are essential for cross‐regional flood challenges. This study reveals interregional FRMP coupling and pioneers a heterogeneity-responsive GI optimization, offering planners a novel decision-support tool for coordinated GI planning for cross-regional flood risk management.

Groundwater is a vital resource for ecosystems, with its recharge process influenced by climate change and urbanization. The transformation of natural and urban landscapes and the over-extraction of groundwater contribute to its depletion and degradation. Groundwater recharge and management are intricately linked to land use and the landscape. Despite this close connection, spatially integrating groundwater recharge strategies in the landscape context remains underexplored. This systematic review synthesizes state-of-the-art research at the intersection of spatial planning, landscapes, and groundwater recharge. We employed a combination of bibliometric visualization and thematic analysis and reviewed 126 studies published between 1990 and April 2024 from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. Based on their objectives and outcomes, we found four prominent themes in these clusters: groundwater recharge potential studies, groundwater vulnerability studies, design-based studies, and participatory studies. When organized iteratively, these clusters can become potential building blocks of a framework for a landscape-based groundwater recharge approach. With interdisciplinary collaboration, spatial visualization and mapping, a co-creative design, and a feedback mechanism at its core, this approach can enhance stakeholder communication and translate highly specialized technical knowledge into adaptive, actionable insights. This study also highlights that including spatial design can help develop landscape-based groundwater recharge for long-term sustainable regional development.

The concept of historic gardens has gradually expanded to encompass a broader range of landscape meanings. UNESCO's cultural landscape categories have significantly influenced land policy improvements in the context of globalization, with historic gardens being classified as Category 1 cultural landscapes. The other categories are organically evolved landscapes (Category 2) and associative cultural landscapes (Category 3). While existing studies have primarily focused on each of these categories individually, it remains unclear how to characterize a cultural landscape when all three categories coexist and influence each other, as seen in complex cases such as the Chengde Mountain Resort (CMR). Furthermore, strategies for improving sustainable land management based on this understanding are still lacking. This study uses landscape mapping to collect data, digitally reconstruct, and characterize cultural landscapes in the CMR based on four environmental factors: topography, accessibility, visibility, and land use changes. Based on this, we illustrate the evolution of the CMR through reconstruction, capturing four phases detailed in 144 scenes. From this, we identify six distinct groups of scenes with six targeted indicators, each reflecting specific spatial attributes of Category 1. Additionally, statistical and comparative analyses of land use changes illuminate various landscape dynamics of these scenes that correspond to Categories 2 and 3. The discussion presents a systematic sustainable pathway to characterize the interdependencies among UNESCO’s three cultural landscape categories. Based on these findings, this research proposes a three-level management model that connects dynamic authenticity and modern functionality, offering insights for urban policymakers navigating pluralistic cultural landscapes.

In the context of Chilean Metropolises such as Santiago, Valparaíso, and Concepción, ecological and social fragmentation of cities lead to significant environmental disturbances, including alterations to the urban climate, loss of biodiversity, and the gradual suppression of ecological corridors and native habitats, ultimately heightening current and future risks, and degrading the quality of life for urban residents stemming from excessive urbanisation, ineffective planning, maladaptive design, and environmental management in critical natural areas. Although an abundance of general frameworks and principles already exist, they necessitate a more contextual and integral approach that considers the natural dynamics of the landscape (landscape logic) as a base for social and economic development. This research presented a landscape approach taking the city of Valparaíso, Chile, as a case study. A methodological framework utilising mixed methods, was developed to analyse and diagnose potentialities of the landscape for developing practical knowledge for planning and design, conscious of the community demands and capacities, its ecological system and its complex geomorphology, and the future applications and assessment in biodiversity terms and social impact. A design-related research opens the opportunity as a methodology that will make it possible to incorporate different types of expertise and work on various scales. This research provides a means for developing spatial guidelines and design principles to strengthen Valparaíso’s green/blue infrastructure at multiple scales. It will ensure water security, biodiversity conservation, safer and more inclusive spaces, and better integration of informal settlements while enhancing ecosystem services for the community. Additionally, by incorporating the natural dynamics of the landscape, this approach provides ways to reduce risk, promote adaptation, and build resilience.

The increasing recognition of the health benefits of blue spaces highlights their crucial role in constructing Healthy Cities and advancing Sustainable Development Goals. Given that promoting recreational running represents a fundamental pathway to harnessing these benefits, integrating it into spatial planning and design is imperative. Nevertheless, this integration process necessitates substantiated evidence, especially concerning variances among population groups. To address this gap, utilising crowdsourced data and a machine learning approach, this study investigates heterogeneous spatial distributions of recreational running across various age demographics in Rotterdam, with a specific emphasis on visual perceptions and built environments. The mapping results illustrate the varied allure of blue spaces for recreational running, exhibiting a trend of increased clustering in running activities with age, extending beyond the city centre. The outcomes of GWR and spatial regression models indicate significant associations between various visual perception factors and built environment indicators with individual running preferences. Crucially, disparities and spatial heterogeneity are evident in the impacts of different environmental factors on running across age groups. Accordingly, tailored planning strategies and patterns are proposed, informed by age-specific environmental perceptions and preferences, contributing to a deeper understanding of the blue-health mechanism and offering practical insights for creating health-promoting blue spaces.

De bedrijventerreinen in Nederland zijn een belangrijke drijfveer achter onze welvaart en ze vormen de werkomgeving van velen. Momenteel staan deze terreinen vol met ‘grote dozen’ en is er een gebrek aan groen. Hierdoor wordt het er warm, is er sprake van wateroverlast en is de openbare ruimte niet ingericht op verblijf en recreatie. Dit maakt de terreinen onaangenaam voor werknemers, bezoekers en omwonenden. Met het nationale Werklandschappen van de Toekomst programma wordt beoogd om de duizenden bedrijventerreinen in Nederland te transformeren in klimaatadaptieve, gezonde, natuur-inclusieve en multifunctionele bedrijventerreinen. Dit is een belangrijke conditie voor de innovatie van de terreinen en daar gevestigde bedrijven. Het transformeren van bedrijventerreinen is een complexe opgave. Een dergelijke transformatie kan leiden tot een verscheidenheid aan ruimtelijke, ecologische, sociale en economische voordelen zoals een aangenamer microklimaat, ruimte voor multifunctionaliteit, bevordering van de biodiversiteit en van de gezondheid van de werknemers. Door kwalitatieve omgevingen te bouwen versterken we de economie. Om te komen tot deze nieuwe generatie bedrijventerreinen zoeken we naar integrale ruimtelijke oplossingen en handelingsperspectieven. Dit vraagt om landschapsbewuste gebiedsontwikkeling en waar mogelijk met versterking van de economische en innovatieve waarde van bestaande bedrijventerreinen. De terreinen zullen dus hun economische karakter behouden, maar hun kille uitstraling inruilen voor een aantrekkelijk perspectief. Hoe ontwerpen we voor een dergelijke integrale gebiedsontwikkeling? Deze bijdrage pleit voor een co-creatieve aanpak waarbij generieke ruimtelijke patronen worden ontworpen die toepasbaar zijn op de duizenden bedrijventerreinen in Nederland.

Urban agriculture is acknowledged as a multifunctional integrated concept capable of delivering various ecosystem services. Design-related empirical research which is regarded as crucial for introducing and exploring the transformation of design knowledge and practice. Despite the growing body of scientific evidence, operational guidelines for this topic are relatively scarce. The primary step in promoting practical value involves reviewing existing design knowledge and transformation status in empirical research. In conjunction with the existing design research findings, research through design is the only way to acquire and test design knowledge. Spatial design is acknowledged as a way to translate theoretical concepts into practical applications. This systematic literature review offers a comprehensive qualitative analysis of urban agriculture, ecosystem services, and design research. Additionally, it utilizes bibliometric visualization tools to clarify existing research gaps and propose reliable solutions. This paper reveals the imbalance of design research in delivering ecosystem services in urban agriculture through the review of 70 selected empirical research articles. The results suggest that the research for design approach is the most prevalent and offers abundant design knowledge. However, the relatively infrequent use of the research through design method obstructs the transition from implicit to explicit design knowledge, resulting in a shortage of available operational guidelines. Consequently, the study proposes a framework for systematic design knowledge of urban agriculture to catalyze the transformation of design knowledge. Finally, we outline the framework's composition and logic and elucidate its role in addressing research gaps.

Urban blue space offers substantial health benefits by encouraging population physical activity. Despite much evidence on the nature-health nexus, the relationship between blue space and recreational exercises remains under-studied, limiting the realisation of health benefits in blue space design. Using crowdsourced data, including volunteered geographic information and street view image data, this study investigates the associations of blue space quality with recreational running and cycling in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Results show that recreational exercise levels on street segments vary based on the blue space type and design. Compared to inland canals and rivers, small-scale recreational waterbodies are more conducive to running but not cycling, while both activities tend to cluster around the Nieuwe Maas River. Interestingly, the Water View Index shows a general negative association with both activities after adjusting for the blue space type. Besides the waterbody characteristics, eye-level environmental factors, including higher Green View Index, lower building density, more diverse land use, greater connected street network and fewer traffic elements, are associated with more running and cycling exercises. Results for visual complexity and neighbourhood population composition are mixed depending on the exercise type. These findings are further translated into spatial design patterns for developing exercise-supportive and health-promoting blue spaces.

Numerous studies show the benefits of wilderness to humans and the environment. Therefore, preserving and developing wilderness areas within urban settings are crucial to combat and mitigate challenges like biodiversity decline resulting from urbanization. According to previous studies, human-wilderness interactions can be contradictory, e.g., relaxing while feeling anxious and insecure. How individuals perceive and comprehend intentional urban wilderness, what dimensions contribute to their perceptions, and how these dimensions influence the visitors’ perceptions remain to be investigated. Selecting Jiangyangfan Ecological Park (Hangzhou, China) as a survey case, this research investigates if and how people perceive intentionally incorporated and designed urban wilderness and how various dimensions of attributes shape their perceptions. This study identified three dimensions that may contribute to visitors’ perceptions of the urban wilderness; namely, cognitive landscape attributes, perceived environmental attributes, and their visitation experience. A mixed-method approach was employed using a questionnaire, mental maps, and environmental behaviour observation as diverse data sources to assess visitors’ urban wilderness perceptions and comprehension from the three dimensions. Results indicate a high propensity to visit the park as an urban wilderness. Our findings also revealed that visitors’ perceptual environmental attributes, e.g., the existence of vegetation and waterbodies and encounters with wild animals, as well as their visit experiences, e.g., their satisfaction with the visit and their motivation for experiencing nature, significantly influence their perceptions. In contrast, prior knowledge and experience-based cognition of urban wilderness attributes showed no significant influence on their perceptions. Moreover, attributes like plant diversity, water visibility, and plant density emerged as critical factors shaping visitors’ perceptions. These findings underscore the importance of considering visitors’ on-site perception of environmental attributes and actual visit experience when assessing the value and acceptability of urban wilderness areas. Future implications of this study for urban wilderness planning and management were also discussed.

In recent years, smart cities have gained traction worldwide, particularly in the Netherlands, where urban populations are growing, and technological advancements are shaping urban landscapes. Smart cities utilize innovative technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and the emerging Internet of Nature (IoN), to enhance efficiency, sustainability, and residents› overall quality of life. The IoT, a network of interconnected devices and sensors, optimizes various urban systems like transportation, energy management, healthcare, and public safety. Similarly, the Internet of Nature extends IoT principles to natural ecosystems, promoting biodiversity and climate resilience. Integrating IoT and the IoN offers promising solutions for urban challenges, ensuring that smart cities in the Netherlands and beyond continue to thrive sustainably. These concepts offer innovative solutions to challenges posed by rapid urbanization, resource depletion, and climate change. This paper explores the integration of IoT and the IoN in the context of smart cities, focusing on their applications and best practices in the Netherlands. Smart city applications in the Netherlands focus on smart mobility, energy transition, circular economy, smart green infrastructure, nature-based solutions (NBS), and digital twin models. Cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and Eindhoven lead in smart city innovation and employ smart infrastructure, digital connectivity, data analytics, and citizen engagement.

Landscape Logic is an essay on the need for a landscape-based approach to designing sustainable urban environments.

Urbanization is one of the biggest challenges of this century. Urban development comes at the expense of fragile ecosystems that protect and provide us with food and water, not to mention the associated increasing vulnerability to flooding, drought, and social inequality. We therefore need a landscape-based approach to urbanism that considers the biosphere as the context for social and economic development and takes the landscape as its basis.

Landscape-based urbanism utilizes the understanding of the landscape system and its ecological and social-cultural processes and relationships – landscape logic – as the foundation for designing sustainable urban environments across scales. Design with nature, people, and history are at the approach’s core. Using landscape logic, we can build nature-inclusively and climate-adaptively and ensure a healthy and safe living environment for everyone.

Steffen Nijhuis is a full professor of landscape-based urbanism and head of the landscape architecture section at the Faculty of Architecture and The Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.

Landscape Logic was published on the occasion of the appointment of Prof. Dr. Ing. Steffen Nijhuis as Full Professor of Landscape based Urbanism at Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (NL), on 28 March 2023. The text is an adaptation of his inaugural lecture, held on 2 February 2024 in the Aula of Delft University of Technology.

Riverscapes are a complex and multi-scale socio-ecological and hydrogeomorphic system, which is the result from the interaction between human and nature. The "River Style Framework", based on the principles of hydrogeomorphology, provides a mature learning tool to understand the "form and process". The paper made a systematic review of the main principles, procedures and contents of river style framework. The multi-scale spatial framework, the classification system of river style and geomorphic units provide the basic approach for describing and interpreting river character and behavior. At the watershed scale, the priority of restoration strategy of each reach can be identified after the geomorphological condition assessment and the restoration potential assessment; at the reach scale, with the evolution trajectory analysis of the specific reach, the change trend can be predicted, and providing knowledge evidence for "process-based" riverscape restoration design and actions.

[Objective] Water could be regarded as a vital element for human existence, which has shaped cities for centuries. Blue spaces, centred around water bodies, play a pivotal role in urban development by delivering various ecosystem services and influencing the design and planning of urban environments. In addition to the numerous benefits and services provided by water, recent research indicates that blue space exposure and perception could also enhance human health and well-being, especially in urban contexts. However, health benefits are often not or implicitly taken into account in design practices. While an increasing number of researchers acknowledge the importance of applying current health evidence to practice, there is currently a lack of specific methodological support to bridge the gap between evidence and actions. Furthermore, given the growing focus on healthy urban living, the demand for the development of healthy cities, and the requirements of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), addressing this gap is of utmost importance at present. Based on the analysis and synthesis of existing evidence, this research aims to propose a conceptual framework that links the health benefits derived from blue space exposure and perception with spatial design practices. The framework attempts to address the current gap and encourage ongoing exploration in future research and practice. [Methods] This research first searches relevant publications on blue space and human health included in the Web of Science Core Collection and Google Scholar during the past five years, and selects the representative ones for detailed analysis and summary. Based on the analysis results, the key pathways linking blue space exposure and perception with human health are identified. Next, a tailored methodological, conceptual framework linking health evidence and design practices is proposed according to the frameworks and evidence in existing studies. Meanwhile, the results of the literature analysis and several Rotterdam cases at different scales are used to demonstrate the application of the framework and illustrate its feasibility.

[Results] Based on the results of the literature analysis, three main blue space exposure and perception types are summarized, including indirect perception and exposure, accidental perception and exposure, and intentional perception and exposure. Next, four main pathways linking the exposure to or perception of blue space and human health are identified and briefly discussed, including enhancing physical activities, reducing harmful exposure, benefiting psychological outcomes, and promoting social interactions. Subsequently, a four-step conceptual framework that translates the health evidence into practical design knowledge is proposed. The steps comprise extracting critical health evidence, summarizing key design concepts, categorizing core design elements, and translating into design principles, spatial patterns, and evaluation methods. At first, the research extracts key evidence from 57 representative literature. And then, the research summarizes 42 key design concepts. Next, through an analysis of the similarities and differences between the design concepts, five core design elements are identified, including the quantity, accessibility, visibility, spatial quality, and design process of blue space. […]

In the heart of southern Iran’s arid expanse lies Siraf, a testament to the enduring bond between water and civilisation. This port city flourished in the 9th and 10th centuries, sustained by ingenious water management. Exploring Siraf’s water heritage reveals a cultural landscape shaped by the symbiotic relationship between water and human innovation. Through meticulous analysis of technical reports, excavation records, interviews, and historical accounts, this research aims to understand Siraf’s water heritage landscape using an interdisciplinary landscape-based approach. This approach integrates insights from archaeology, geology, geohydrology, and agriculture to provide a holistic view of the interconnectedness of natural and cultural elements. These dynamic systems inspire sustainable practices through landscape-based solutions considering natural and cultural landscape features to address urban challenges. As we face climate change and urbanisation, understanding and preserving Siraf’s water heritage landscapes through an interdisciplinary approach provide a roadmap for a more resilient future.