Ecological Analysis of Urban Parks (case study:Mashhad)

The distinguishing characteristic in the third millennium is planning based on principles of sustainable development in line with nature and all activities related to urban issues. Ecological concepts and consequently ecological park refers to a comprehensive and integrated set of measures which create coordination, balance between the constituent elements of the park in order to establish sustainable development. It means that environmentally friendly plants are not the only matter, so at the same time recycling and saving energy is also considered. We can say that it includes such a wide scale of ecological indicators of environmental variables energy use and materials used which has been considered in this paper. Evidence in planning and designing urban green spaces that are currently used, indicating the fact that the idea of ecological design is very poor. The idea of using ecological parks needs theoretical foundations, principles, criteria, standards and providing them from one side and comparison of existing parks and identifies the similarities and differences with these criteria, from the other side, which are consider in this paper. This paper aims to provide standards and criteria for ecological planning and design of urban parks and use them in the design of new and existing parks consistent with its criteria then the comparison of three existing parks and ecological parks in Mashhad with the principles and finding differences and similarities as the last purpose. So the ecological landscape thinking will be clear at the end.