A Landscape Ecological Investigation on an Urban Highway Corridor:Urban Ecology Applied to Infrastructure Planning and Design

This research is about landscape ecological study of urban infrastructure corridors, i.e. urban highways, with the proposition that in investigating the infrastructural projects in cities, ecological concepts, methods and models can be used to help planning and design frameworks and procedures. The aim of the research is to link theories of landscape ecology to the built environment practices in urban infrastructural projects. The research is done by conducting a case study at the scale of an urban project. This case study is done to determine the ecological values, challenges and impacts of urban built infrastructure, specifically transportation corridors, in order to find out how ecological principles and landscape features can be utilized in planning and design of this type of projects. This investigation is conducted on EastLink highway corridor, one of the most important infrastructural projects of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Considering the opportunities and challenges of an integrated green and grey infrastructure approach in helping ecology of the cities, the planning and design implications of this research are presented in the findings and concluding section of the paper.

Keywords:

landscape ecology , road ecology , highway , patch-corridor-matrix , planning and design