Sustainability and Cities: a landscape planning approach

According to the United Nations, the world’s population has recently become predominantly urban, and the world’s urban population is projected to double by 2050 (United Nations Habitat 2006). This paper discusses the issues, challenges and best practices that are being conceived and applied by landscape and urban planners to bring sustainability and to build resilience capacity in cities. Landscape planning provides working/operational methods to address complex built and green urban environments with diverse resources, land uses and competing social needs and values. The theories behind landscape planning, landscape urbanism and new initiatives on sustainability and resilience will be reviewed and illustrated with selected international applications to urban planning and design. The concept of ecosystem services is used as a metric to assess the specific abiotic, biotic and cultural functions and processes in urban environments in support of sustainability.