The Complex Ecosystem Of Urban Landscape Architecture--A Case Study In Hangzhou City

Urban landscape architecture (LA) deals with urban natural ecosystems that provide wildlife habitat and a place for people to go to experience and appreciate nature. It plays an important role for improving the health and function of the urban ecosystem. Urban landscapes are complex ecosystems that not only include the natural environment but also critical social and economic components. These three components must be designed to fit the specific needs of each urban area. It is therefore important that research be conducted to determine the theoretical and practical constraints of creating designs with the correct balance of environmental biodiversity and social appeal at and economically justified cost. This paper reports the results of a study of the status of urban LA. A systematic study green space in Hangzhou City, China was used as a special case study. The study also addressed the status of green space, biodiversity, attraction and use of these designed areas by local citizens. The main conclusions are summarized as follows:1. Primary study on urban green spaceThere has been a large increase of green space in many major cities of China during the tune 1993-2001. Most of the added green spaces are public space that is the most important component of urban LA system and also very close to public living. The GM model of the Grey System on the rule of open green space was applied in Hangzhou City using data from 1987-2001 and the model was set up as following: x(r+l)=3772.546980e0-086426'-3386.92698. The model was tested by the method of posterior error. The indexes of correlative value of posterior error c and microerror probability p showed that the precision of the model in forecasting open green space in Hangzh City is reliable and accurate. The GM model of the Grey System reflects the real situation of open green space in Hangzhou City.2. Biodiversity of urban landscape architectureThe status of biodiversity in different types of urban LA around the world is presented. In addition, problems in identifying and quantifying the elements of urban biodiversity are discussed. A conceptual model for improving species conservation in urbanlandscape ecosystems is presented. An assessment of the street trees in Hangzhou City demonstrates the application of the model. The assessment identified a total of 39 tree species from 26 botanical families in 380 streets which was in the metropolitan area of Hangzhou City. The majority are broad-leaved deciduous trees(BLD, 62.81%). Coniferous tree only accounting for 5% of the total tree population. Of the 39 species Oriental plane tree and Camphor tree play the most important role. Across all the tree species, the majority are of small size (i.e. <-15cm DBH) and these accounted for 55% of the tree sizes. Trees of > 40 cm DBH account for only 6% of the tree population. In all, 380 streets were surveyed in six districts. Species distribution per street is highly uneven with one species occupying 54% of all the streets in the study area. Species diversity indices across all six districts as determined by the Shannon-Wiener diversity index (H') and Simpson diversity index (D'), showed similar patterns of variation. The highest mean diversity values were obtained by Xihu district while the lowest were obtained by Binjiang district.3. The utilization of urban landscape resources and the factors related to the visitors in urban landscape architectureWe also present an analysis of the distribution of visitors to various landscape in Hangzhou City to determine the relationship between landscape resources and their utilization. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and Grey correlation analysis (GCA) were applied to analyze the utilization of landscape resources in nineteen gardens. These gardens included Lingyin Temple, Santanyingyue, Quyuanfenghe, Yunsongshushe etc and the analyses are based on data of the number of visitors between 1987-2001. Analytical results showed that: a) there was large difference in the distribution of visitors to these gardens. HCA indicated that...