Seminar Paper: Sustainable Urban Landscapes

Sustainability in urban landscape design is become more essential and recognized in order to address the environmental issues which became much more serious nowadays. The urban landscapes are the space all around and between buildings, ranging from streets and squares to parks, gardens, urban woods, stream corridors, and many other types of green space.  Urban landscape perform many essential functions for urban dwellers such as provide shelter, cooling or shading, cleaning the air by filtering the pollutants, provide aesthetic values to occupants, spaces for social cohesion and use for various activities and also as habitat for urban wildlife.

Sustainable landscape incorporate human, nature and built environment 

The design processes will take into account several components of urban landscape that can be designed sustainably. The components are spaces, shelter, air movement, shading, drainage and many more. In terms of spaces, the design can optimize the usage of space around the buildings for accessibility          by creating an urban landscape that is pedestrian friendly and also universal design. In terms of shelter and shading, the natural shelter which is using tree as shelter will give shading and cooling effect to the environment in a sustainable way.

By using trees, the air movement in the landscape can be improved and reducing the usage of non-renewable energy for cooling the environment. In terms of drainage, by using grass and trees, the run-off water after rainfall can be reduced and absorbed properly. A well-designed landscape will attract the urban wildlife to make the landscape as their habitat. This will act as a medium for connection between the people and the natural environment. In fact, natural environment will help in reducing stress of working environment in urban areas such as help people to restore themselves during lunch or between working hours.

KLCC landscape - too artificial? 

By designing urban landscape in a sustainable way, environmental issues can be addressed. The urban landscape will be able to perform an important role in micro-climate improvement in which minimising the need for artificial air conditioning, improving filtration of storm water, providing shelter and many more. In other words, it can reduce the urban heat island effect.

Sustainability approach has been implemented in designing urban landscape in many countries around the globe. The approach is been implemented by designing the landscape that suits local environmental conditions, conserve water, avoiding use of harmful chemicals, minimizing the non-renewable energy consumption, use of sustainably and locally sourced products and materials and apply energy conservation, waste minimisation and pollution prevention in build and construct the landscape.

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