Designing Ecological Park: A Step towards Environmental Sustainability of Cities (Case Study: The Southwest Mountains of Mashhad)

Present status of cities emphasizes on the creation of an extensive and planned green space, with highlighting green spaces in order to establish ecological balance against the built environment. In this context, ecological parks that have been raised at the end of the last century, can be as an important factor to solve this problem. The overall objective of this study is to enhance the urban environmental conditions in order to promote the environmental sustainability through ecological designing and connecting the built environment with the existing natural virgin lands such as mountains in the cities. In this way, a suitable condition can be introduced as the scientific-economic support for education and developing a proper environmental culture.
The method used in the present study is based on descriptive and analytical practices. In this study, the southwest mountains of Mashhadhave been studied. After fundamental studies, the case study examples, feasibility and evaluation of the ecological capability of the study area were conducted. Finally, based on Makhdom’s model, the results were presented as solutions.
The findings show that only 35% of the study area have a potential for future use and activities and the rest should be considered as a virgin natural area. In potential activity zones, zoning is done in a way that in the edges with a lower slope connected to the city, there is greater utilization of land and with penetrating into the site and higher slopes, utilization of land is reduced.
The results show that in the process of eco-park designing as an ecological design sample, those criteria and activities which distinguish eco-parks from other types of parks are taken into account. Also in the designing process with ecological assessment, with respect to the environmental layers and localization of ecological models for determining the value of land use, the highest efficiency and minimum environmental impact can be achieved.