Rethinking planning tools through the ecological landscape design approach : Saida case study -

Abstract

The rapidly growing urban sprawl along the Lebanese coast is eroding the distinctiveness of this landscape and threatening its ecological sustainability. Furthermore, permanent negative environmental repercussions are inflicted on its natural resources, undermining the urban ecology and degrading the quality of living in cities. Despite these alarming trends, the Lebanese urban planning framework (including ‘regulatory tools’ and ‘operational tools’) fails to accommodate growing global concerns for sustainable urban development and green urban strategies. This thesis introduces the methodology of ecological landscape design arguing that its holistic framework and careful account of local contexts can complement current planning tools towards greater sensitivity to the natural and cultural context of cities. In order to show the validity of this tool and demonstrate its positive potentials, the thesis takes for case study the city of Saida (South Lebanon). Saida is one of the few Lebanese coastal cities to retain an agricultural and cultural heritage. The city is currently undergoing a second land pooling development, the East Wastani Project, which will reorganize the property landscape to allow for a transformation of the valued agricultural lands and heritage landscapes, north of the historic city, into residential and commercial urban quarters. So far, advocacy efforts as well as the Urban Sustainable Development Strategy 2012-14 commissioned by the municipality have convinced public actors of the necessity to supplement this operational intervention with the revised land use plan. Yet, none of these tools explicitly incorporates ecological landscape design, leaving severe concerns that the area of East Wastani will be disfigured, in line with earlier urbanization trends. By applying the Ecological Landscape Design approach, the thesis begins by identifying Ecological Landscape Associations, key urban landscape components in the city and the East Wastani site. It then moves to prop