Scales of Interactions between Urban Landscape with Urban Ecology in Urban Development Programs

According to available evidence, ancient Iranian cities have been developed based on the duality of man and nature and their interplay. This has resulted in an artificial environment, such as an urban landscape. With the development of urbanism based on scientific, industrial, and technical specializations driven by contemporary science, there has been a great focus on urban structure. Such emphasis on structure-driven development has created a distance between human and nature in the environment. It has resulted in disciplines such as landscape based on the “Inseparability of object-subject,” ecology in urban development based on the “natural ecosystem continuity in the city.” The current study aims to propose strategies for cultural, human, and environmental concerns in urban growth. This study is developmental-applied research, which attempts to develop interdisciplinary strategies in a challenging interaction between the concept of the urban landscape and urban ecology in urban development planning programs that apply to multiple scales. The results indicate that there is an interactive relationship between the subjective and objective layers of the urban landscape and urban ecology on three scales: micro, intermediary, and macro. The components of this interaction include the set of concrete experiences of residents in the face of the urban structure; the creation of perceptual-memory images based on natural and artificial urban signs; and the creation of perceptual realms of the urban environment. If explicable strategies for their formation are incorporated into the urban development program, there would be two layers of the urban landscape and urban ecology in the structure of contemporary cities. This will make human/nature alignment possible. In other words, the urban environment will form a part of the citizens’ mental view of the city and be institutionalized in the public mind as an element of the urban landscape.