Landscape and the City: creating a sustainable development: V Congresso Internacional Cidades Criativas

This paper examines the potential of a holistic approach for urban and regional strategies in order to understand the way this might contribute more effectively to current global challenges. Part of a wider research strategy investigating the extent to which low carbon and spatial quality can be delivered at a regional level, it demonstrates benefits of adopting a range of processes to deliver integrated and sustainable urban development. The case studies examined include the Landscape Observatory (Spain), the Room for the River (the Netherlands) and HS2/HS2LV (UK). The Landscape Observatory has raised public awareness of the value of landscape to the extent to which there is now a public law protecting landscape in Catalonia. An investigation of projects dealing with climate adaptation in the Netherlands demonstrates the potential and significance of introducing low carbon and the quality of space in urban and regional infrastructure projects. An examination of the HS2 high-speed rail project in the UK illustrates how it might be possible to impact on the perception and development of a singular engineering project in order to convey a wider sustainable vision and the impact that this might have on future landscape in towns, cities and rural areas. The significance of development of procurement processes, policies and legislations as part of the administration phase of urban and regional landscape schemes are also considered necessary for future landscape strategies. Initial outcomes indicate that successful delivery requires the development of a landscape vision and the understanding of low carbon and spatial quality concepts through design in order to be better expressed in the infrastructure and create added value to our cities and regions.