Integrating Landscape Ecology and Urbanism in Transportation Corridors Design and Delivery: an Australian Case Study
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Landscape Research Record No.2 INTEGRATING LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY AND URBANISM IN TRANSPORTATION CORRIDORS DESIGN AND DELIVERY: AN AUSTRALIAN CASE STUDY KHANSEFID, MAHDI The University of Melbourne, Melbourne School of Design, Australia, [email protected] 1 ABSTRACT environment professions to present new planning The potential of infrastructure systems for and design frameworks. Considering the performing the additional function of shaping complexities of infrastructure projects, built architectural and urban form and helping ecology of environment professions including landscape the city is largely unrealized. The planners and architecture can help in the process of integrating designers have most often been charged with landscape ecology and urbanism approaches in hiding, screening and mitigating infrastructure. The transportation corridors design and delivery. interrelationships between ecological and landscape urbanist approaches and engineering 1.1 Keywords practice in planning, design and delivery of infrastructure, transportation corridor, transportation corridors, i.e. urban highways are landscape ecology, landscape urbanism, studied in the current research in order to find out sustainability how and to what degree these can be integrated in planning, design, construction, and operation 2 INTRODUCTION process and help the project sustainability and “Infrastructure, no longer belongs in the multiple functions. Novel approaches to road exclusive realm of engineers and transportation infrastructure development indicate a shift in values planners. In the context of our rapidly changing from a traditional engineering approach and instead cities and towns, infrastructure is experiencing a adopting an urban design and landscape approach paradigm shift where multiple-use programming to the development of road and related transport and the integration of latent ecologies is a primary infrastructure. This approach helps the consideration. Defining contemporary infrastructure sustainability of these projects in the urban context. requires a multi-disciplinary team of landscape In order to determine the values of urban built architects, engineers, architects and planners to infrastructure, specifically movement corridors, at fully realize the benefits to our cultural and natural the scale of an urban project, a case study is systems” (Aquino et al., 2011). conducted on EastLink, a large scale infrastructural As an intrinsic characteristic of urban transportation project in Melbourne, Australia, to infrastructural plans, many disciplines and factors present a framework for observing and mapping influence the planning and design of urban actual design and delivery process. The case study infrastructure and numerous criteria should be is done using Infrastructure Sustainability (IS) rating taken into consideration during their design process scheme developed by the Australian Green and a team of experts should utilize and integrate Infrastructure Council (AGIC), recently renamed to their expertise in the a project design and delivery. Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia The significant roles of landscape architecture, (ISCA). As a result, the research presents an landscape ecology and landscape urbanism in the approach for urban infrastructural projects based urban infrastructure design process are the core of on the sustainable development principles and this research to find out how urban infrastructural provides an argument for assisting planner, projects can be built more sustainably and designers, and builders of urban infrastructure to multifunctional. enhance them from an ecological and urban perspective in interaction with other urban land 3 BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE uses for multiple functions at regional and local REVIEW scales. The results of investigating the influence of The potential of infrastructure systems for large scale infrastructural projects on the ecology of performing an additional function of shaping cities, and their interrelationships with ecological architectural and urban form and helping ecology of concepts and methods can be used by built the city is largely unrealized. The planners and 213 Landscape Research Record No.2 designers have often been charged with hiding, concerns. Figure 1 shows these interactions and screening and mitigating infrastructure. They are the position of built environment profession and rarely asked to consider infrastructure as an their fields of activities. opportunity. Infrastructure has the capacity to serve For example, in “Green Infrastructure: as the material of design or establish a local identity Connected and Multifunctional Landscapes”, UK with tangible synergic relationship to the region. It Landscape Institute states that green infrastructure can be designed with a formal clarity that expresses (GI) needs to be taken as seriously as the more its importance to society and environment, at the familiar “grey infrastructure” of roads, railways and same time creating new layers of spaces and power lines. Green Infrastructure represents an connections (Strang, 1996). approach to land use that emphasizes The landscape urbanism is a recent school multifunctional and connected spaces, of thought in design and planning (Weller, 2008) underpinned by the concept of ecosystem services and urban landscape ecology investigates the and recognizes the many benefits that are structural and functional interrelationships between generated by natural ecosystems (Landscape the abiotic, biotic and cultural aspects of the Institute, 2009). environment (Forman, 1995a, Forman, 1995b, In the utilitarian approach to urban Forman, 1998, Niemela, 2011). These approaches infrastructure design, the blue (water), grey (urban can provide the theoretical background for the built) and green (natural or built) infrastructure for study of urban infrastructural projects due to the the cities are mostly designed separately at numerous factors and elements that influence different periods of time or are planned and utilized these large scale plans. These projects are where incompatibly. Sometimes the green infrastructure is landscape, ecology and urbanism (Mostafavi et al., built after a long time of the initial grey and blue 2010, Mostafavi and Najle, 2003) can meet to infrastructure. Very often the grey infrastructure increase the ecosystem services at the landscape destroys environmental potentials during scale (Müller et al., 2010). construction. The urban built infrastructure can Approaches such as urban design provide other opportunities for landscape architects approach to road infrastructure development similar to that of the natural infrastructure in the city. (Raeburn, 2005) indicate a shift in values from a In other words, the transportation systems across traditional engineering approach and instead landscapes, including urban landscapes, can adopting an urban design and landscape approach provide ecological flows and biological diversity in to the development of road and related transport addition to safe and efficient human mobility infrastructure. While achieving its transport (Forman and Deblinger, 2000). Therefore, in objectives in moving people and goods, road investigating the influence of large scale networks and infrastructure projects should infrastructural projects on the ecology of cities, contribute to the form of human settlements and ecological concepts and methods can be used by their accessibility. Raeburn (2005), using several built environment professions to present new case studies in Australia, emphasizes that such design frameworks. projects should regard the natural ecology as well as the built, natural and cultural heritage by taking 4 GOALS AND OBJECTIVES urban design approach. Due to the vital and inevitable roles of both Similarly, landscape ecological thinking natural and built infrastructure in the livability of the can potentially play important roles in the planning cities, an integrated approach towards designing and designing urban infrastructure and landscape and building the infrastructure is necessary and architecture can act as a driving force for physical landscape urbanism and ecological approach can application of the ecological principles in such be of great help to solve this problem by their urban projects. Ideas such as green infrastructure comprehensiveness to bring the potential services (Benedict and McMahon, 2006, Davies et al., 2006, and roles of the ecologically designed infrastructure Gill et al., 2008, Ignatieva et al., 2011) and urban into urban environments. The current research tries infrastructural design (Bélanger, 2009, Meyboom, to find out how urban infrastructure can be 2009, Strang, 1996, Tatom, 2006) increasingly designed more ecologically sound, sustainable, confirm the crucial roles of landscape and and responsive to the urban environment based on landscape architecture in urban infrastructure. The landscape ecological/urbanist approach. In interaction of ecological sciences and methods ecological urbanism studies, there is a gap between such as landscape ecology, landscape architecture the concepts and methods presented in the and urban design seem as a logical solution for ecological sciences and the current planning and solving many of the today’s environmental design process. 214 Landscape Research Record No.2 Figure 1. The Interface of Ecology with Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Landscape Design (Makhzoumi and Pungetti, 1999 p.192) The research tries to fill this gap and more rating