Urban Road Landscape Design Research

Urban road is the framework of a city, and the urban road landscape is an important window showing the city image. It is definitely an effective way to build a distinctive city image through the road landscape.As the capital of Shanxi Province, Taiyuan is one of the important cities in the central and western regions, which connecting the east &west. Since Taiyuan wined the Provincial-level garden city in late 2005, it has carried out a number of important urban construction projects with the aim to build national garden city. Part of those was to afforest and remold the primary and secondary roads, which has received excellent landscape results. Then in 2009 Taiyuan was officially named as a national garden city by MOHURD (Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of China).And currently, it is devoting its effort in building the national ecological garden city.In this paper, by graph paper analysis and site inspection of section layout forms, planting configuration modes, plants varieties, street furniture, pavement designs, node and hard landscape designs of various kinds of roads such as expressway, primary and secondary roads, and business streets, etc. in Taiyuan, the successful experiences in road landscape design were summarized, problems existed were investigated, and improvement strategies for road landscape design were put forwarded here. Research results were as follows:1. Successful experiences in road landscape design in Taiyuan:(1) High starting point. Constructed a number of High quality landscape roads.(2) Culture embodied.(3) Rich plant configuration.(4) Emphasized ribbon continuity and highlighted node landscape(5) Valued more on ecological and humanized designs2. Problem investigation in road landscape design in Taiyuan:(1) Shortage of scientificalness in the designs(2) Shortage of humanization in the designs(3) Integrity in the road landscape design is to be strengthened3,improvement strategies for road landscape design in Taiyuan(1)Focus on scientificalness in the designs In landscape design, it is important to avoid excessive designs. For plants design and selection, trees should be planted in corresponding lands, and indigenous trees should be developed. Appropriate planting configuration proportion should be adopted and it should be carefully in anti-season planting and large scale transplanting.(2)Integrity of the landscapeFirst, the city integrity should be considered. The urban road- greenbelt landscape design should reflect the characters of the cities. Secondary, the roads themselves should be considered. All landscape of a road should be considered entirely to produce a uniform and concordant landscape.(3)Pay attention to the regionalismDesigns should be adjusted according to local conditions. Cities and roads original features should be fully respected, original cultural marks should be retained to highlight local culture and strengthen road landscape culture connotation, therefore strengthening characteristic design. Meanwhile, for plant design, indigenous plant should be adopted to reflect local characteristic.(4)Emphasize economical efficiency: strengthen"conserving"designs, build conscious road landscapeIt is necessary design "economical" green streets from all aspects such as land-saving, water-saving, energy-saving, and material-saving. For plants design, plant species should be used rationally, less lawns should be designed, more drought-tolerant plants adopted, large scale seedling plants and un-local plants avoided. In water-saving aspects, road landscape water should be supervised as a whole, drainage and rainwater collection work should be organized effectively, more rain grass ditch, ecological parking lots and filter water belt should be constructed, and more water-saving irrigation technologies and multi-purpose permeable material design should be used.(5)Richness of plant landscape: increase plants selection and indigenous plants development strength, amplify the level and vertical structure of the plants.(6)Lay emphasis on ecological road landscape designs(7)People-oriented. Satisfying the people's visual and behavior demands.Changes in admiring speed bring people the sense changes in city landscape elements scale. It is necessary to consider more on the behavior demands and visual experience of the main road users in road landscape design.