A Study on Proposed Urban Highways Landscape Design Elements and Indicators with a Landscape Resilience Enhancement Approach

The urban highways landscape is one of the most important components of the urban landscape, enhancement of sustainability and resilience of which is of great importance. Studying the urban highways landscape design elements and indicators with a landscape resilience enhancement approach is a useful tool to promote the quality of urban life and support making the landscape sustainable to cope with current and future environmental changes. Despite the important advancements made in the field of identification of highway landscape indicators, investigation of the designing elements and indicators from the landscape resilience point of view has been neglected. Therefore, the provision of elements and indicators for the highway landscape design is still required to enhance its resilience. Thus, the present study aims to, first, investigate the principles and rules of highway landscape design, and then, explain the factors affecting its resilience. In this regard, to formulate the theoretical framework, relevant studies and theories were collected, and analyzed by library studies and reviewing library resources, internet resources, and articles. Then, the relevant elements and indicators to urban highways design were investigated at two human and natural levels, with a focus on the landscape resilience aspect through content analysis of relevant studies. Findings indicate that designing urban highways landscape with a resilience enhancement approach can be designed with a focus on the creation of diversity (biodiversity) and complexity, connectivity, and interconnection of urban ecological networks, redundancy, modularity, multi-functionality, adaptability, visual quality, and aesthetics. These elements are proposed with the provision of the related definitions and design components.