Infrastructure as Landscape: Integrating Human and Natural Realms in Urban Highways Planning and Design (original) (raw)

2016, Manzar the scientific journal of landscape

| In the context of rapid global changes in the urban environments and sustainability and resilience approaches, many aspects of cities including infrastructure, i.e. urban highways, is experiencing a paradigm shift where programming for multiple-use and the integration of both human and natural needs is a primary consideration. In the ecological urbanism approach to infrastructure planning and design, urban infrastructure, including transportation routes, no longer belongs in the exclusive field of engineers, transportation planners and managers and role of landscape architecture and landscape ecology is incremental in this process. The potential of infrastructure systems for performing the additional function of shaping architectural, ecological, and urban form has been largely unrealized. Urban transportation corridors as an important part of built urban ecosystems can be enhanced by integration with ecological features in terms of their contribution to both human experiences of the urban environments and green infrastructure in the city. The significant roles of landscape architecture, landscape ecology and landscape urbanism in the urban transportation corridors planning and design is the core of this paper to find out how urban infrastructural projects can be built more sustainably and become multifunctional and bring ecological services to the city. This research uses a case study for investigation; EastLink, a large scale infrastructural transportation project in Melbourne, Australia. This project is the largest road ever constructed in state of Victoria and Australia's largest urban road project. It incorporates an extensive shared use path network for cyclists and pedestrians and has established constructed wetlands, water retention basins and bioretention strips along its route. The environmental experience of drivers, cyclist, pedestrians and the people living in the nearby environments has been considered during the planning and design and landscape architects and designers were actively involved in the process. The research has established accessibility, connectivity, multiple use, multi scale functions, and maintainability as main criteria for integrating human and natural realms in contemporary infrastructure design for the cities and reshaping future urban landscapes.